


Lie Back, and the Sea Will Hold You

by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Dreamsharing, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Five Stages of Grief, Forging (Inception), Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Recovery, Sharing a House, Teaching, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:11:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst thing for a forger is to lose his gift. But in the end, it may be the worst thing for a point man, too. </p><p>Eames is not up to his usual snuff, and Arthur refuses to stand by, even if that's all he <i>can</i> do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lie Back, and the Sea Will Hold You

**Author's Note:**

> ****More specific warnings in the end notes, but they are spoilery. You may visit them before reading if you so desire.****  
>   
> 
> This story has been in the works for over a year and is deeply close to my heart. I dedicate it to a wonderful friend who listened to me yak about a slash fandom she wasn't even a part of, and then asked to read the fic as soon as it was finished. 
> 
> Regretfully, my friend passed away before I could complete this story. It is with much sadness at her passing, as well as gratitude for her constant enthusiasm and amazing good spirits, that I present it to you now.
> 
> To my dear friend Debby, who fought so very hard and was taken away from us all far too soon.

_When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for all who remain._

_(All Who Remain by Beware of Darkness)_

 

 

It’s a Tuesday.

He rolls, and the die comes up two again.

 _“Fuck_ you.” He can barely hear his own words.

He rolls again. Refuses to believe.

**

 

_Four months earlier_

 

Eames falls out of the forge between one step and the next, and is left staring at their mark with his eyes wide, mouth open. 

The mark blinks. All the projections turn as one, and Arthur tries to salvage it, gets off a shot to Eames’ skull and half an explanation, _stealing from you, do you see how they—_

A moment later, Arthur is dead, too, and waking up. Tearing a line out of his arm and running with the rest of them.

When they regroup, in a safe house only good for catching their breath, Sawyer explodes, aiming acid at Eames so thick the walls drip.

Ariadne stands to the side, breathing shallowly. Her face pinches up: the ends of her brows come down, her chin tucks in. Her lips plant together as she watches Eames take it.

And Eames rakes a hand through his hair again and again, pacing, frowning at the floor as if a serpent is roiling beneath its surface. He doesn’t attempt to defend himself, and it’s that which launches Arthur into a defense instead, until his own words ring louder, slice deeper.

Finally Sawyer washes his hands of them. He sneers at Arthur, loads his weapon—aims another foul look over his shoulder. And ducks out the door.

Ariadne should go next, but she dallies on the threshold. Their chemist is already long gone, not even bothering with the safe house. And Arthur will be the last, staying with the already sunken ship until the rest of the crew is in the wind.

He replenishes his ammo and eyes Eames sidelong as the forger reloads his own gun: jilted, angry motions that nearly jar the weapon from Eames’ hands. Ariadne’s hand is on the door latch, one eye on the street, so Arthur sidles closer to Eames, attending to his scope, the phone he’s going to pack once he gets hold of his bag again and the cell that will go in his back pocket, until he’s near enough to discern Eames’ quick intake-outrush of air. 

“You alright?” He asks it lowly, so that Ariadne will not hear.

Eames doesn’t answer immediately. His expression is fixed, his eyes far away, and it occurs to Arthur that Eames might not have heard any of what Sawyer just said to him. 

And then Eames growls, “I’m fine.” Shoves the gun into his belt. Strides past Ariadne out the door, and disappears.

In the silence, Ariadne meets Arthur’s eyes. She opens her mouth. Arthur shakes his head, refusing to give her an outlet until she’s gone, too.

Eames always has an answer. A defense or an acceptance, a taunt. Something. Never so obvious a cover. The unease settles bone-deep inside Arthur, more entrenched than anything else today.

**

He doesn’t hear from the others for a month. Doesn’t see them for two, but Ariadne calls him partway through—one of his burner numbers—to ask if it’s true, _the client hasn’t bothered to look for us?_

As far as Arthur can tell, it is true; their client never paid them an advance anyway, and if the man used less than savory methods to get the mark out of the picture when the job crumbled, Arthur’s done thinking about it. Not the way he deals with things, as Dom had said. And if the client is past the stage of parceling blame, Arthur is going to grab that gift with both hands. 

It does beg the question though: who should be blamed?

Arthur doesn’t think it’s Eames’ fault. Gut feeling. And the client doesn’t seem to care anyway. So, no, Arthur’s concerns lie much closer to home. For example, exactly how much of this is their extractor still placing on Eames’ shoulders, an extractor who was extremely down on his luck? Or the chemist, waiting for that payoff so she could, in turn, make more payoffs?

Bottom line: Arthur doesn’t know either of them that well. He does know Eames. He’s already chosen the side he’s standing on, whether or not he states it out loud.

But nothing happens, and eventually Arthur receives a call about another job, along with a request to be put in contact with an impeccable forger.

The job turns out to be one of Yusuf’s. Ariadne’s still lying low—Arthur knew she was smart—so she’s not there, but Arthur’s met their architect before, name of Druitt. Little guy, huge ideas, one of the oldest practitioners in the trade, and reliable. Their extractor is someone Arthur’s crossed paths with often enough to predict actions, not often enough to understand the full reasoning behind them. His name is Richter. It’s the cordial type of working relationship that Arthur enjoys, flexible and professional. Generally respectful.

They’re in a shabby hotel dating from the era of gangsters and tommy guns. It has charm in its lintel moldings if not in its dust and grime. Arthur arrived after Richter and Yusuf, and didn’t have time to clean out the cobwebs.

He makes no bones about watching Yusuf right from the start, and Yusuf makes no bones about being watched. After Fischer, some things are just understood.

Eames comes in right on time, looking much the same as he did two months prior. He flips his poker chip steadily, but also as if he’s forgotten it’s there. Fingers just doing what they do. He looks at Arthur for a little longer than usual, and Arthur wonders if Eames is worried about what he’s said to the rest of them.

He needn’t bother; Arthur’s the one who called him, isn’t he? The ‘impeccable forgers’ list is only one person long, and frankly, Arthur doesn’t care how many of his former teammates would bitch at him for that pronouncement.

For his part, Eames is subdued, but outwardly willing and contributive to the overall scheme. He listens, he offers, he corrects. He challenges Arthur as usual and smiles good-naturedly when Arthur turns it around on him. They aren’t as energetic about it as they have been, but this team has a certain solemnity that the Fischer team didn’t, so.

By early afternoon, Druitt is already deep into his designs, tinkering away with a pencil behind his ear and a metal file in hand, shaping with loving detail the scale model on the table before him. Richter pulls Yusuf aside for chemical discussion, so Arthur heads in the only direction he can.

“How are you?” He keeps his voice low and blunt. It’s not small talk.

“Just fine, Arthur,” Eames answers, indulgent but with a faint territorial warning. Arthur nods, keeps any and all questions out of his expression and pats Eames’ shoulder once. The gesture feels awkward immediately, and he walks away, leaving his forger to his business.

It’s Arthur’s job to determine the effectiveness of the team they’ve put together. He has no problem stomping on toes to do it, though the years have made him more circumspect about the manner in which he does it, and the necessity of anyone else knowing details.

**

Richter is nothing if not a doer. The beginning of the next week has them down in the dream constructing. Indeed, Eames is fine, back from his first forays in tailing his marks. Arthur feels a little guilty for doubting his abilities in the first place. Eames snaps into his forge with barely a blink and proceeds to flirt astonishingly badly with Arthur for the entire half hour they’re under. Arthur’s helping to craft Druitt’s template layer, something he can do in his sleep, pun entirely intended.

They still have work to do on the research front, but from what Arthur knows of the real Ms. Mavis Walford, Eames has her down-pat and then some.

“What’s a nice guy like you doing in a dirty mind like mine?” Eames’ mouth is pretty and bow-shaped around American-accented words. His tone is slightly desperate, vibrating with the need to be well received.

“Oh.” Arthur dispatches a faulty line of curb and starts over at street level. “That one was almost good.”

Eames’ laugh is the same high voice, but this time robust with his usual certainty. “Does that mean you _will_ take me out?”

Arthur eyes him—or her—up and down. “Sure.” He gestures at the rundown bar in front of them, the sign shot full of bullet holes, the window pane jutting out at one edge. “We’ll go here.”

Eames ticks his tongue in exaggerated disappointment and steps back on one heel. For an instant, he looks almost heartbroken. He ducks his head, sending a dark lock of hair over his face, and watches Arthur with hooded eyes and a fraction of a smile.

Arthur wonders what it is about the dream that makes talking to Eames so easy. At first, he thought it was that they were never Eames’ features he had to face. But it’s the same when it’s just Eames standing there, hands in the pockets of tan trousers, the edges of his coat kicked back behind each wrist.

Arthur thinks Somnacin loosens his tongue.

“I’m done here,” Druitt calls, straightening from his crouch several buildings down. He’s barely finished speaking when the music signaling the kick begins to play.

Arthur leans in, gesturing Eames closer with the crook of a finger. “Good effort, Ms. Walford.”

The smile is all Mavis’, wide and beautiful, but it is Eames who winks at Arthur as he slips free of the forge.

All is well.

Arthur swings his feet down to the floor and pulls his line free. Eames is slow to sit up, extracting his IV with nonchalance, smiling as Yusuf teases him about all the pretty dresses Mavis gets to wear. But there’s strain around his eyes that was not there before. Arthur is almost caught watching, and corrects just in time to keep Eames from confronting him.

There are still explanations. Jet lag, for one. Constantly tailing a giddy young girl, for another.

Arthur’s fixating, too damned much and for no good reason.

He notes Yusuf’s nerves, too, and wonders how long their chemist has been frowning at nothing and staying late going over his notes and concoctions. Still, it’s too long before Arthur catches on to that, and he berates himself. This has to stop; he has a job to do, a duty to these people. The trouble is just coming from the wrong place, the one person he never expected to give him pause, not in a group that includes Yusuf and two unknowns.

Arthur shunts his background checks to the side and sets his brain back to reconnaissance mode.

Yusuf does spend more time than usual tinkering with his chemicals. He asks each of them to go under for test runs that Arthur had thought they were past. The mix is not quite right, then. If that’s all it is, then it’s easily handled, something Arthur can work around. Eames continues crafting the personalities he’ll be wandering in and out of, Druitt shows off his vast talent by introducing some of the most sumptuous work Arthur has ever seen and Richter… Well, Arthur doesn’t know Richter well enough to get a bead on anything that might be amiss. 

He completes the final background checks on the mark with a careful eye on his surroundings.

**

“I don’t think this is something you should let slide,” Yusuf says, in such a tone that Arthur can’t help but look up.

Yusuf and Eames are behind a set of large cabinets fifteen yards away. But the room has strange acoustics, especially where Arthur is standing, in the little alcove by the farthest window. It’s the only window not painted over black, and he needed light. But the sound bounces, even Yusuf’s hushed tones.

What gets Arthur’s attention is the undercurrent. As if Yusuf is trying to say as much as he can before Eames tells him to shut up.

“I am fine.” That’s Eames, slow and deliberate, far calmer than Yusuf. Who doesn’t buckle to peer pressure, more power to him.

“You’re not. It’s taking too much. You’re barely reacting as is, and I can’t sanction using more of—”

“Later. Yusuf.” Eames sounds unperturbed.

Arthur doesn’t particularly enjoy eavesdropping. But he’ll do it in an instant when necessary. Unfortunately, the conversation seems to be over, and Arthur takes what opportunity he has to get out of range before they notice him.

**

He has no idea just how good Eames is at hiding things until the day it becomes blisteringly apparent.

The fifth day into their brand new second level design, Eames dips into character, takes three steps toward the mansion they’re learning—and it drops off him like thawing snow from a roof. Eames frowns down at his hands—definitely his and not Mavis’ tiny skeletal ones—then settles, preparation Arthur has learned to recognize, and slides her on again.

She shimmers as if her skin is made of gilt silver.

Eames loses her. Puts her on again. Can’t hold her arm, then her leg. Her shoulders, her hair. One by one, elements shudder away, leaving just Eames standing before them, clenching his jaw.

And they all just… watch. Arthur is especially irritated at himself for this, but he honestly has no idea how to respond. As he tries to figure out which questions he’s supposed to ask, Eames tries Mavis again. This time, there’s barely even a flicker. 

The next time, nothing.

The worst part is that Eames _is_ trying his damnedest. Arthur can see it. He might be the only one who can.

The way Eames’ face pales at the end—this final, fruitless attempt—yanks at something in Arthur’s belly so firmly he steps forward.

“The hell was that?” Richter demands. Arthur freezes, glad all eyes are not on him and his aborted movement.

Eames rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck, chin turning deliberately to one side. He does not attempt the forge again. His eyes flicker shut in a single blink and for an instant, he looks so worn out that Arthur holds his breath.

“A hitch.” Eames sounds as unflustered as you please. But Richter turns the weight of his presence on Eames and, like any good extractor, zeroes in on the problem at hand.

“Do it again. Mavis Walford, now.”

The effort Eames expends is supreme. It hurts Arthur’s head just to watch, and he realizes he’s clenching his jaw.

When Eames can’t do it, it doesn’t surprise Arthur, and he has no concrete idea why. He also knows, instinctively, that Eames is in no state to field whatever’s about to come.

Richter’s nostrils flare. He stalks in an arc around Eames like he’s hunting him, then reaches into his coat pocket.

“Get up top.”

Eames stiffens at the sight of the gun, but before he can move, Richter aims and fires, straight at his head. The noise whams against Arthur’s ears, sudden and shocking. Druitt moves in the corner of his eye, but Richter fires again, this time at himself, leaving them standing stunned in a field with two bodies at their feet, one of whom—

Arthur nearly bites through his tongue against the surge at the sight of Eames’ still features. His fingers find the die in his pocket, squeeze its angles. He wrenches the gun from Richter’s slackening fingers, and presses the barrel to his own temple.

Yusuf looks blindsided when Arthur erupts out of the dream early as well, even more so when he’s followed by Druitt, leaving the dream to collapse with fifteen minutes still left on the clock.

But Richter is already in mid-rant.

“—wasting my time, our time! I don’t know what you’re playing at or why you’re fucking around with this job, but you had better explain it to me right now.”

Eames is already out of his chair. He stands across from the extractor like they are about to draw weapons. Again. The look on Eames’ face is hard and closed, and Arthur knows it well, though he hasn’t seen it in the last three jobs they’ve worked together. It looks especially ugly now, a throwback to a dead time, replaced by a better rapport and an easier trust. Across the way, Druitt looks dazed, taking the line out of his arm with fumbling fingers. His eyes track from forger to extractor. Arthur wonders how many times he’s had to shoot himself to get out of a dream in the span of his career.

“Perhaps if you hadn’t shot me in the head,” Eames grates, “I might be more inclined to help you out with that conundrum.”

Yusuf stands poised, the third point of their triangle, but he has not joined in, instead sending glances Arthur’s way. His hands fist at his sides and relax. Arthur jerks his line free and grabs a pad of gauze to press over the puncture.

“People have told me things about you, Eames,” Richter says, “and a lot of it’s damned unfavorable.”

Eames opens his mouth, but Arthur places himself in between.

“Think about your next words, Richter.” It comes growling out of him with enough rancor to make their architect sit up and take notice. Richter glowers back, hands curling at his sides. He’s big. If he throws a punch, Arthur may be taken by sheer weight alone.

“Fix it,” Richter finally seethes. His eyes flash back to Eames. “Or get me a new forger.”

He walks straight out of the room without another word. Arthur sniffs, feels his lip curl, but when he turns back, the look on Eames’ face is unsettled, lost in a world of thoughts Arthur thinks he’d rather not know about. Druitt eyes Arthur as if he can snap his fingers and fix it all. 

Yusuf clears his throat, and holds a hand out toward Eames. “Let’s get you back in,” he says, quiet, as if Richter is still around to hear it. “Figure this out.”

**

The truth comes out in pieces. The way Yusuf manages to keep things from the rest of his team hasn’t changed at all. It’s a smug but sick feeling, being right. Arthur has spent more begrudging weeks than he’d like to admit trusting Eames’ choice in working relationships, and that’s… that says something about Arthur’s trust in _somebody,_ doesn’t it?

It seems Yusuf has been fiddling with Eames’ dose.

“He’s not reacting as he should.” Yusuf’s words stumble. Arthur may not be Yusuf’s biggest fan, but at least he knows how to keep an eye on him, the specific things to be on the lookout for. And Arthur can empathize with the need to not give too much of a friend’s weakness away. In fact, he’s starting to bristle at the fact that one person he knows has to do it to another, and in front of people none of them know well at all. It’s the principle of the thing. 

Yusuf gestures at nothing. “The usual dose isn’t enough to send him under anymore, for whatever reason. And the deeper he goes, the less effective the Somnacin gets. It happens sometimes if you’re sick with a virus. I was giving him a double dose at first.”

“So giving him more,” Arthur says. “It’s interfering with his ability to forge?” Surely that’s easy enough to fix.

Yusuf and Eames share an uneasy glance. “No,” Yusuf says at last. “It’s… It’s something else. I’ve been cutting him back for the last two days. Something’s interfering with the receptors. He’s barely metabolizing the Somnacin.”

“He’s not affected by the current level and you’re _lowering_ his dose?” Richter this time.

Yusuf’s expression goes desperate, as if any second he will drop to his knees and beg for patience. “I can’t give him anymore, don’t you see? It’s building up in his system as it is. It’s a wonder he hasn’t keeled over from—”

“He’s done,” Richter says. Yusuf blinks.

“I am the best forger you’re ever going to get.” Eames’ voice sounds far too low compared to the others, and yet there is force behind it. For once, Arthur is thankful for Eames’ unapologetic grasp on his considerable gifts.

“Not anymore,” Richter snaps. He gestures at Arthur like Arthur’s some sort of stable boy. “Find someone else.”

Arthur gets to his feet as slowly as he can; if he goes any faster, he might just lose control and beat the man. Instead he levels all the ice in his arsenal at the extractor. “You find someone. I’m done, too.”

He gets his coat and leaves the room before Eames or Yusuf can say anything.

**

Without a forger, the job was in trouble, but without a point man? It’s dead in the water. Arthur’s done caring. He goes home and cleans the place top to bottom, then decides dreamsharing can go fuck itself for the next however long and starts tossing out his phones.

In the end, he can’t bring himself to cut off his only communication with Eames. He keeps one of the cells, a number from the Fischer job that he was never forced to scrap. A strange kind of expectation flounders in his gut, tight and heavy.

Ten days later, the cell rings, Yusuf on the other end. And then Arthur is intensely glad of the couch just behind him.

**

Eames has a brain tumor.

It’s early stage. Very early; Eames had to get creative with explanations for the doctor regarding how he detected it in the first place. Since that debacle of an appointment, Saito has been involved, though Arthur has no idea who called him. He suspects it was Yusuf, but he also recalls particular looks shared between Saito and Eames immediately after the Fischer job that left him wondering what had happened in Eames’ third-level dream.

The doctor Saito suggests is local, and well aware of what they all get up to. At least that’s one roadblock out of the way, as well as the explanation of why Eames can’t call on government-funded healthcare. Arthur doesn’t have much experience with the doctors that inhabit the dreamshare community, flitting about the edges as they hold down their legitimate practices elsewhere. He’s always been fairly healthy, and the wounds he does get are nothing that require a doctor who knows about Somnacin.

“Wait, wait a minute.” Arthur paces his living room, up and back in front of the couch. “How serious is a glioma?”

“It actually has a very high rate of recovery,” Yusuf says from the other end of the line. “For a brain tumor.”

Not exactly reassuring. “But he’s getting it treated?” He presses his thumb between his eyebrows.

Yusuf hesitates. “Says he will. As much as it’s possible to do so.”

When Arthur hangs up, he has to physically stop himself from researching all he can find on brain tumors. He is only moderately successful, and afterward feels both relieved and twice as horrified in turns.

**

It’s not a cheap process.

Arthur is appalled by how much it costs to live with cancer. Perhaps if Eames had some kind of health insurance here, it would be more manageable. Obviously his employment does not provide such benefits.

It’s a week and a half after the diagnosis. They sit in a café, not discussing it in any straightforward form. Eames stirs the same cup of tea with the same stained wooden stick, and Arthur doesn’t pretend he cares that he just wasted four dollars on his own drink.

This time Eames called him. This time Arthur suggested the location. His mind churns round and round, always coming back to the same place, a place Eames does not seem inclined to go.

“England, then.” Even speaking at normal levels, Arthur still feels like he’s muttering. 

But Eames shakes his head. “I’m not popular there at the moment.”

Arthur watches him silently. He should want to ask, shouldn’t he? He should… want to know, definitively. That’s what he does.

“It’ll have to be hotels,” Eames goes on. “There’s no other—”

“No.”

Eames gazes at him over his mug. The steam wafts between them, blurring Eames’ face. He looks so normal, like anyone else here. “Whatever you think you’re about to say, don’t.”

Arthur didn’t get this far in life by being cowed by others. He looks his counterpart directly in the eye. “You’re not staying long term in a hotel.”

Eames puts his stirring stick down with deliberation. “I’m not?”

“You’re going to need every penny you have.”

“Not arguing that,” Eames says softly.

Arthur offers his house, a comfortable, stable, owned-rather-than-rented refuge already in the city. As it is, his guest room has had nothing to do in ages.

Eames’ tone is grim. “I can’t impose on you like that.”

“Live with it,” Arthur snaps, and then realizes what he’s said.

**

Either Eames doesn’t own much, or he is able to leave the physical proof of his history behind. In his light load, he brings clothing that fits easily in three of the five bureau drawers, seven hardback books without their glossy cover sleeves, a laptop, and—the only thing that makes Arthur work for an explanation—a faded quilt. It doesn’t end up on the bed, and Arthur’s not about to go searching through the closet to locate it.

Eames is not so much a quiet housemate as a preoccupied one. When he reads, Arthur often finds his eyes focused on things other than the book. Eames takes to preparing meals the same night he arrives, and dedicates a notable amount of time to do it. Arthur doesn’t say a word, as the food is never late and always good. They do eat together, on the couch rather than at the dinner table. Arthur props a leg on the cushion between them while Eames sits facing forward, utilitarian and efficient, and he remains until Arthur is done, maybe out of politeness. Maybe because he’s distracted himself thinking of other things.

Arthur doesn’t know what to say, but anything Eames initiates, he finds himself able to answer readily. It’s never deep stuff, though. He’s not sure why it bothers him, as they’ve never talked about deep things in the past.

His own failing makes him edgy, both glad of the end of their meals and anxious for the next one. So he can do better? It’s irritating.

“Need me to go for groceries?” Eames asks one day. Arthur jumps. He shuts the fridge, knows Eames has been there long enough to stare as he surveyed the empty shelves, to deduce the obvious next step.

“No. I’ll go.” He waves a hand at the pad of paper magnetized to the refrigerator. “Just… If there’s anything you want, write it down.”

“You need eggs.”

Arthur looks at him. “Among other things.” 

“Olive oil.”

Arthur leaves the kitchen, edging around Eames to do it. “Write it down. I’ll go later.”

**

For all its silences, its aliases and its shadowy corners, the dreamshare space is an active, vibrant community full of noisy inhabitants. It gets around pretty quickly that Eames, the best in the business, can no longer forge. It’s a strange kind of fame, their brand: known without being known, more sounds and scents than faces.

There is no commiseration. Arthur didn’t expect any; this situation isn’t exactly a common occurrence. As Eames’ most recurrent associate aside from Yusuf, Arthur becomes the focus of an alarming amount of inquiry. But there are also no genuine well-wishers. Just vultures fishing for information, a scandal, whatever the hell. Behind their words trembles a chord of morbid curiosity that Arthur ignores at first. When he can’t anymore, he shuts it down rather than listening to its wheedling, and marks names mentally to be treated with extreme caution in the future.

 _What does Eames think about all this?_ No idea, why don’t you ask him? _Is it true Richter’s blackballed him?_ Not likely. 

_Is Eames really at death’s door?_ No.

But the truth is staring Arthur down hard. As soon as Eames is useless to their dreamshare compatriots, he ceases to exist.

Except that’s not exactly right. He ceases to exist as a _human,_ and instead becomes a novelty, a commodity now defunct, to be added to stories or that list of things no one really discusses outright.

The inquiries Arthur does get are never directed at his own wellbeing and consist of aloof presumptions about Eames’ state of health. Certainly, and perhaps their only saving grace, they are never directed at Eames himself. 

**

At least Yusuf remains. It’s a cold comfort made a little warmer because Arthur is just coming to terms with the idea that he may have duties in this scenario, and that this time, he doesn’t know how to perform them.

It’s maddening. He can see the end game clearly, but none of the road to reach it.

As unsettling as the whole situation had been, Eames had his back during the most dangerous, difficult, rewarding job in which Arthur’s ever taken part. He kept projections off Arthur when Arthur had his hands full of steering wheel, no room for a gun, trying to salvage a hemmed in car-cum-death trap. It wasn’t luck that got them out of the Fischer job alive, it was skill, steady heads and steadier hands. Beyond that, Eames has covered his back with a real gun, headed off tails by causing ruckuses Arthur secretly thinks Eames enjoyed for their own sake, paper-forged him seven real world aliases when Arthur’s identification was too hot to hold. When he’d barely known Arthur a week, Eames looked a Yakuza hit man in the eye and kept the secret of Arthur’s connections to a rival gang. There had been no dream to shatter around them, only real city stink and real weapons aimed at Arthur’s head. Some nights Arthur can still feel the slamming of his heart in his chest, an echo of a day when he had to put his life completely in another person’s hands, no net to catch him. At this moment, there is nothing that will induce Arthur to leave Eames’ back vulnerable, open to the shots now being aimed by the world itself.

But he can’t block these bullets.

It’s a desperation, an utter helplessness that leaves him awake at night, restless on his couch rather than in his bed. Lights off. No motion, because Arthur _will_ have control over that. But he can’t stop his brain, which is a time traveler trying not to look too closely at the future.

**

Eventually, reality checks in with a bang. Arthur has missed the scans, the blood tests and the diagnostics, but he knows what comes next.

Eames’ first appointment for treatment is an unwanted flurry of nerves for Arthur. Is he supposed to go? Why should he? He’s not entitled; if Eames wants anyone to accompany him, it’s likely Yusuf. But Arthur feels like he should go for some damn reason. Even his most logical and convincing arguments don’t silence that niggling.

The problem is, he can’t invite himself to something like this, and Eames hasn’t asked.

The appointment is at 3:00 PM. At 2:32, Arthur sits on the couch tapping his fingers on the armrest and trying to keep his heel from bouncing. Eames comes into the room adjusting the collar of his coat. Arthur catches himself eyeing the motion of Eames’ fingers and turns away.

He can feel it when Eames looks at him, though. Hears the clearing of Eames’ throat.

“You busy in two hours?”

“What happens in two hours?” Like he isn’t fully aware.

Eames opens his mouth, then shakes his head slightly.

Arthur gets up as if pushed. “I’ll drive you.”

Eames’ brow pinches. “Now?”

“Easier.” Arthur retrieves his jacket and doesn’t look at Eames as they head out the door.

**

The exam room is cool and sterile, and far too cramped for three people. Arthur is forced to wait in the hall for the doctor to find the proper number of chairs for everyone.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to begin treatment,” the doctor says, perusing Eames’ chart. “Usually this type of tumor is surgically removed and then the area is treated, but treatment methods for brain tumors vary depending on the situation. As the growth is still very small, we may be able to knock it out with radiation. It will weaken the cancerous cells, make surgery as manageable as possible, if it turns out to be necessary.”

Eames smiles, leaning back on one arm where he sits on the exam table. “Can you go over the process for me once more, please? For clarification.”

The doctor glances Arthur’s way.

Eames waves a hand, half dismissing the look, half beckoning Arthur in. “He’s putting me up. He should know all of this.”

The doctor nods. “Wise precaution.”

Apparently for this type of tumor, chemo has proven fairly ineffective. Arthur listens to news Eames already knows, each of his muscles going tighter and tighter with the unfamiliarity. Because the tumor is located in an area that is difficult to get at, they’re planning on neoadjuvant, or pre-operative, radiation to shrink the growth, surgery to remove what’s left, and more radiation afterward. 

Eames nods as the doctor stresses the compromised immune system, the need to stay healthy, avoid sick people, eat and drink well. Eames has not experienced any seizures, which bodes well; should that change, the doctor needs to be informed. Arthur finds his mind slipping constantly toward other thoughts: Eames out of the game for months, who else knows, who else needs to know, whether he’s allowed to make that determination at all, the utter disorder Eames must be feeling to have asked him here, the state of their bank accounts, whether this _thing_ was caused by their line of work, and—seizures? Seizures. He keeps having to drag his attention back. At one point he finds Eames’ eyes leveled on him.

When it’s time for the radiation itself to begin, Arthur retires, somewhat out of fear, to the waiting room.

**

Eames exits the treatment area slowly, a little white around the mouth. Arthur, who hasn’t bothered trying to read the magazine in his hands for the past half hour, gets quickly to his feet and offers to pull the car around.

**

Eames sleeps. Arthur feels the silence of his house in a way he hasn’t before.

The worst comes during the second night, when he hears Eames being sick in the hallway, kneeling over the garbage can he has dragged from his room on the way to the bathroom, bare shoulders straining and severe under the overhead light. Arthur is hit then, soundly, by the knowledge that all the help he can give in this instance isn’t going to provide relief. Isn’t going to take any of this away.

**

He does research, then. For days.

**

Arthur receives a job offer, a hack into the under-table dealings of a corrupt IRS agent. It’ll last two months and requires extensive research and preparation, a team full of elite dreamsharers, and no mention at all of a forger. The extractor skirts around the subject entirely until Arthur asks point blank who they have.

He doesn’t listen to the name, more the rushed cadence of the woman’s voice as she lists credentials. She relaxes a little as she returns to buttering Arthur up, taking his silence for assent until the moment he interrupts.

“Not interested.” It’s a lie. That doesn’t matter because on another level, it’s also the truth.

“I… Oh. Can you.” She tries to recover her certainty. “Can you recommend anyone else for poi—”

“No.” And that’s the truth as far as she’s concerned.

He hangs up. Leans against the table for a moment, then sighs and turns.

Eames is standing in the doorway.

Arthur clears his throat. He walks on by and into his bedroom.

**

Eames’ doctor is calm and friendly. He leaves Arthur feeling hopeful every time they depart the office, no matter how discouraged he felt coming in.

He has never been so glad of his frugal habits. Eames, it turns out, is not the flighty jackrabbit they all thought him to be, and has money saved up, though not as much as Arthur. The point is, it’ll do. Together, they’re covered for a little while, at least. It’s one less thing on Arthur’s plate.

He finds himself wishing he could worry more about the money instead of what’s left in its wake.

Should surgery be necessary, they’ll be using a different type of anesthetic because of how ineffective the Somnacin was, and because Eames uses Somnacin regularly in the first place. Eames has to go in for extra sessions to test various combinations. Yusuf comes with them a few times to compare notes with the doctor.

The only call Arthur receives is from Saito, inquiring unobtrusively after Eames’ health.

How is it that this has become Eames’ existence?

Cancer. _Cancer?_

They steal people’s thoughts. They dance around intelligence agencies and modern mob bosses alike, they spend fifty percent of their lives outrunning instruments of mechanized destruction and highly trained wetworkers. They’ve bled on each other’s clothing and hidden out in each other’s houses and walked away from death whistling, with their hands in their pockets.

And now.

**

“Well, hello to you, too,” Eames says into his cell phone. Arthur pauses on the living room’s threshold, then continues to the couch, shoes in hand. It’s Saturday, mid-morning, and he’s going for a run.

He sits down and pulls one sneaker on, then glowers at the laces as he knots them firmly in place.

“No, it’s alright, don’t worry about it. How’re you?”

Arthur can hear the chatter of a female voice on the other end, but can’t recognize it. He finishes his first shoe, a double knot because the damn nylon slips, and grabs the next.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve nothing to be sorry about.” On the other side of the coffee table, Eames eyes Arthur, then grins. Arthur forces a smile. “Yes. Arthur’s making sure I eat.”

His fingers miss the loop and he has to start over. Sunlight invades the room, pushing at the shadows surrounding his feet.

“Don’t you dare, Ariadne,” Eames says, cutting off the next burst of speech. “Stay right where you are. I’ve the most efficient nursemaid in existence. Finish your bloody class.” 

He listens for a moment, and Arthur watches as his smile softens at the edges and in his eyes. “I do, too.” Another pause. “Look, you take care of yourself. And _listen_ to him. He’s good at what he does. Okay. Yeah. Ta.

“Would you believe,” Eames says as he hangs up the phone, “that Ariadne’s taking lessons from Druitt?”

Arthur grunts. “S’good for her.”

“Think they could help each other, myself.” Eames scratches his head, right at the nape where all the fine hairs are. Arthur watches out of the corner of his eye. Finally Eames’ hand drops. “You’re off, then?”

“Going for a jog.” Arthur heads for the door, then turns around. Gestures at the room. “You’re okay, you’re—”

Eames just looks at him, the edge of his mouth quirked.

“Yeah.” Arthur lets himself out.

** 

The days when he’s weakest, the days his face is practically white and his legs shake, Eames still insists on pulling his weight. 

He attempts to make a grocery run in the middle of a hot Wednesday afternoon, and Arthur finds him sprawled loose-limbed on the couch with the list in hand, his other palm pressed over his eyes to block out the light. Arthur asks him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, then snatches the list, adds half again as many new items, and leaves the house.

When he gets back two hours later, the living room is vacuumed and the kitchen and bathroom are spotless. He stares at Eames open-mouthed where Eames stands at the sink, drying the last of the dishes with a hand towel.

“What.” Arthur’s voice deserts him.

Eames shrugs. He wipes out the inside of a tumbler and sets it back into the cupboard. “I feel better.”

He looks much better than he did two hours ago. Arthur knows this is how it will be, Eames tipping back and forth, unwilling to spend the time he feels normal resting up in preparation for the next time he spins downward.

Arthur takes the dry plates off the counter, stacks them in the cupboard, and doesn’t know if he’d have the mental strength for that, were he in Eames’ place. Rest seems the obvious choice, and the madness of Eames’ alternative solution digs uncomfortably.

**

Eames’ doctor frowns at the computer screen. “The radiation isn’t having the effect we’d hoped for.” 

He goes on before they can respond. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The tumor isn’t growing, but it isn’t shrinking either. Preliminary scans show there’s no sign of metastasis, and you’re in excellent shape. My suggestion is that we need to think seriously about moving up the timeline.”

“Surgery,” Eames summarizes after a moment’s silence.

The doctor nods. “The radiation may be stalling growth, but if it’s growing that fast, the sooner we get it out, the better chance we have with post-operative treatment.” He lets it settle a little. “The other option is to continue with radiotherapy as planned, and hope it starts having an effect.”

“And if not?” Arthur deals in information he can quantify. So far, his voice is still his own, at least.

“We try another type of radiation that might be more successful.” The doctor lifts his shoulders, looking between them. “But the next level up is going to come with more side effects. I think your best bet is to just get it out.” 

“And then continue as we have done.” Eames looks a little sick as he speaks. Hasn’t raised his eyes from the floor.

The doctor nods again. “Once the tumor’s out, the treatment becomes preventative rather than reactive. We won’t have to play catch up.”

Arthur opens his mouth, but Eames gets there first. “How soon can you get me in?”

Arthur stares at him, at the sure angles suddenly there in place of hunched shoulders, but Eames is facing the doctor.

“I need to complete additional blood work, and I want a PETCT on your entire body before we proceed, to completely rule out any additional growths. You’ll need to come in and talk to the anesthesiologist again, and I’d like to give your body an opportunity to recover a little from the radiotherapy before we go in. But barring any complications, it’ll be within the next month.”

“Alright,” Eames sighs. He gets down off the exam bench and reaches for his sweater. “Point me in the direction.”

It takes time to get out of the office, time Arthur only half remembers. Oddly, he recalls the entire conversation near-verbatim. Yet he can’t account for the passage of whole minutes. He doesn’t remember the conversation taking so long.

At the front desk, he rubs his forehead. “Just how much are we looking at here?”

The billing nurse gives him the estimate for surgery, but it isn’t until he’s holding the printed version that all the zeroes really hit home. Arthur stares at the number, at the proposed payment plans. At the cost of the radiation treatment and blood draws and scans to follow.

“He doesn’t have any insurance,” the nurse says helplessly as the silence stretches. Across the lobby, Eames is conversing with his doctor.

“No, he doesn’t.” Arthur exhales, then folds the sheet and slides it into his back pocket. He smiles at the nurse, dons the composure he’s been affecting for weeks. “We’ll make it work.”

**

Maybe he should have taken that job for the money alone. Maybe Eames’ silences have more to do with missed opportunities than some sort of gratitude.

**

Arthur blends a smoothie out of berries, bananas, yogurt and supplements as the sun sets over the roof of the next house. He takes it down the hall to Eames’ room. It’s dark inside, all the drapes pulled. He hesitates, then sits down on the edge of the bed. Eames’ arm covers his eyes, elbow pointed toward the ceiling. He doesn’t move save for the rise and fall of his chest.

“How’re you feeling?” Arthur asks, low in case he’s asleep.

“Ill,” so dry it sounds robotic. Eames drags the word out until the sarcasm is unmistakable.

He hasn’t eaten since lunch the day before. Arthur’s fingers tighten around the glass. “Think you can down a smoothie?”

Eames doesn’t acknowledge, doesn’t move at all.

The chill edges into Arthur’s bones, nothing to do with ambient temperature. He swallows, knowing Eames will hear it and hating the fact that it’s so loud.

Eames does nothing.

“Okay.” Somehow his voice doesn’t crack. Arthur sets the glass on the nightstand and gets up, heads for the door, for light and life that won’t give any damn relief. It’s nice to pretend.

“Arthur,” sudden, on an exhale.

He turns. Eames looks at him with clear eyes, head turned on the pillow. His arm now lies extended across the blankets as if he might reach for Arthur. He doesn’t, just gestures instead with his fingers.

Arthur doesn’t move. “Yeah.”

“The effort is appreciated,” Eames murmurs. He sounds almost serene, too comfortable with the entire situation, as if Arthur is a child needing to be reassured of something that should be common knowledge. Arthur’s jaw clicks painfully.

“Drink it.” He tugs at the hem of his shirt and turns again for the door. “You need vitamins.”

“Arthur.”

He’s not sure why it stops him so completely; the tone isn’t any different. Arthur looks back and finds Eames’ eyes still on him, tired but hollow in a new way Arthur can’t define. He steps back to the bedside and hopes the strain of it doesn’t show. Eames’ fingers touch down, very gently, on Arthur’s wrist.

And then Eames asks him the strangest question.

“What do you need?”

Arthur blinks. What does _he_ need? Eames’ voice sounds so very weary, tired of having to make itself known.

He needs Eames to eat regularly again. He needs Eames to be his normal self, not this convalescent with a sense of agency Arthur can no longer read. He needs to wake up from this fucking dream. He needs any number of things, none of which matter at all, next to what Eames needs.

Arthur jerks his hand away, the impotence smarting. “I don’t need anything from you.”

And then regrets the ‘from you’ because it turns the words into a barbed stinger. Eames stares up at him, gone utterly still, as still as Arthur himself. Eames’ hand hangs in midair as if Arthur’s wrist is still there, invisible, and the shadows of the room increase in density.

Arthur leaves.

**

On Tuesday, he takes out his die because he can’t hold out anymore.

It sits in his palm feeling right— _you expected it to, this isn’t a dream_ —translucent red with perfect painted white dots, and he rolls it there for a while, watching it turn, watching its weighted side catch against his skin. It’s pouring outside, the rain so thick he can’t see the street from the kitchen window. Overhead, the lamp glows the harsh yellow of a bulb on its way out, the color seeming to flare with each flash of lightning.

He doesn’t realize just how much he didn’t believe until the die clacks down onto the table top and rolls with the ‘two’ facing up.

Somewhere on the other side of the city, thunder grumbles. Down the hall in the dark half of the house, Eames’ door is shut. He’s asleep, has been for two hours.

Arthur sits back, rubs his palms over his thighs. He picks up the die and throws it again.

Two.

The tiny nick on the edge is there, between the four and five. Laser-drilled; Arthur still remembers the weight of the tool in his hands. Now the lightning catches, beams its imperfection into view and swallows it again.

Arthur rolls with a concerted spin. “Three.”

It’s a two.

Again, the length of the tabletop. “Five.”

Two.

“Six. Three. One.”

Two. Two. Two.

The air has gone thin, he can’t—He rolls again, fingers knocking the die twice before he can get a grip. Rolls, scrubs at his mouth with his knuckles. Rolls. _Rolls._ “Four. Four. Six. _One.”_

He’s breathing too fast, he can feel it. His hand shakes and he rubs his palm hard enough across his thigh to hurt, then grabs the die, hurls it down as hard as he can. “Fucking—”

The die rocks and comes up two. Arthur seizes the sugar bowl, bringing it down atop the die with punishing force. The crack is sharp and ceramic, the sugar scattered in a sweep across the table’s surface, and the die is still there.

In the hallway, a door opens.

Arthur shoves up from his chair, snatches at the die and sends it skittering along the linoleum. He leaves it, leaves the kitchen. Wrenches his coat off the rack and darts for the front door. On the edge of his vision, Eames is a blur of gray and pale peach against black. Arthur doesn’t look, fumbles with the knob, tears his way out into the storm.

**

He walks—

(races)

—until he’s wet, and then until he’s soaked and dripping. And it does nothing. The sharpness in his lungs only hikes higher, the frenzy knocking about in his belly only grows. Endorphins should be kicking in, cleansing, pulling all that bottled combustion out and down, but the opposite is happening, the heat packing in more tightly.

It’s a miracle he even knows where he is. Maybe it’s all fated, though, that he really has no other place to be, and so his body will always find its way back, like some spirit failing to hitch a ride on a lonely country road.

He can see well enough to turn back down his own street. To cross grass and pavement, to gain his front walk. Each step feels violent enough to punch through the stones, but nothing cracks, nothing gives, and it stabs the frustration even closer to the seething rim.

He’s struggling with his coat before he forces the door open. The material sticks to his arms like molasses, pulling at the hairs there. He gets inside and kicks the door shut, finally yanking his coat free.

Eames is in the kitchen leaning against the counter’s edge. He’s put a shirt on over his sweat pants, and there’s no sign of sleep left on his face. His eyes fix quickly to Arthur, dark and alert.

The die is still there, in the corner beneath the dishwasher. Eames hasn’t touched it, has _left_ it there like he expects Arthur to use it again, like he thinks Arthur will need his damned insurance for some future job—

Arthur balls up his coat in both hands and hurls it savagely at the couch-side lamp. It hits with a sodden thump and the lamp pitches over, falls against the armrest and spins to the carpet.

“Arthur.” Eames comes out of the kitchen and moves immediately to the left, toward the front door. For once, there’s a healthy flush in his cheeks. His mouth pinches around the edges like it does when he’s especially aware of his surroundings.

He looks so healthy under this lighting, as tall as he ever was, as sure on his feet. Not like someone with a deadly poison growing inside him, eating away at the very seconds, at Eames’ every breath. It’s the scariest element yet, this incongruous joke at Arthur’s expense, like the world itself is fucking with him.

“This is happening,” Arthur spits. Too loud, not his voice.

Eames bends and rights the lamp without slowing his stride. He’s circling, pacing Arthur, now definitely between him and the door, and Arthur’s chest cinches up at the sheer methodology of it, the stupid thing Eames is trying to circumvent. The utter uselessness of the entire situation.

“What’s happening, Arthur?” Eames asks.

If Arthur were closer to the wall, his fist would be through it, bloody and broken, and useless as well. “You know!” he shouts, jabbing a finger at Eames.

Eames’ face shivers, a mask falling away for that single second. Arthur sees him swallow. “Arthur.”

“Don’t fucking pretend.” He can barely get the words out, there are so many more behind them. And Eames _will not react,_ will not see the world as Arthur now sees it, plain and echoing, desolate beyond his power to describe.

“Stop it.” There’s a current to Eames’ voice, or maybe his very energy. Arthur has always been able to feel it, only he noticed too late and that failure is the most massive thing he’s ever faced.

 _“You_ stop. Stop acting like everything’s alright.”

For an instant, the gray washes back into Eames’ face. He rubs his eyes. “Everything’s not alright, Arthur,” he mutters. “For god’s sake.”

Finally, a fucking reaction. And still Arthur cannot work with it, can already see Eames pulling that cowl back over, setting things to rights again so he can straighten his shoulders and better take each blow. There are things in this man that Arthur can’t even fathom, a solidity that should be splintering apart.

He feels an insane urge to beat that foundation until it shatters alongside his.

“How can you stand there like that? Not feel anything? What is wrong with you?”

Eames’ jaw works. “What exactly do you suggest I do instead, Arthur? Beat someone to a pulp? Scream at the walls? Run out into the fucking rain?”

His lip curls downward and Arthur feels the stab it was meant to be.

“At least I’m facing it, at least I’m fucking reacting. Everything you do just denies it. Like it’s not even there.”

“And what you’re doing is fixing things, yeah?”

“I need this thing gone!”

“Yes, because it’s your bloody body that’s diseased, isn’t it?” Eames’ tone is bitter, saturated with feeling.

“It doesn’t matter.” Why can’t he see this? Why can’t he—“Open your damn eyes, Eames. You have a fucking—” His entire body is raving against stillness, demanding that he move, punch through something, burst through this barrier before he becomes so tightly packed he crushes himself. “Do you know how it feels to _watch_ you just… to see it when you—”

“Arthur, I’m not dead, for fuck’s sake.” Eames’ face is fierce, hardened in a way Arthur has never seen before, an abrupt blossom of life in a body that has been held so blank for so many weeks. Arthur’s breath snags, but Eames stalks forward, sending the lamp over again with a shove that hammers home all that muscle again, all the sheer power that has always been Eames’. “Come here.”

“Fuck you.”

_“Come here.”_

It’s second nature to obey that tone. But Arthur will not. “And do what?” He backs up, finds he’s shaking his head over and over, unable to stop. More words bubble up, each more more torn than the last. “And do what, Eames?”

He thought he’d stepped far enough away, but Eames is faster, lunging into his space and locking fingers around Arthur’s wrist. In a single blink, he jerks Arthur forward, grips his elbow instead. Arthur’s breath hisses out of him. He twists his arm, gains freedom, loses it again when Eames’ fingers snap back around him, thumb digging into his bicep. Arthur swings up at Eames’ face with a closed fist, not meaning to hit him, and Eames flinches back just as Arthur had hoped, but doesn’t let go. He gives Arthur’s arm another firm jerk, and Arthur stumbles bodily against him, his side glancing off of Eames’ chest. He gets a hand around one of Eames’ wrists, but can’t bring himself to twist, to strain that tendon beyond bearing and break his hold.

“Let go of me,” Arthur tries to snap, but it comes out weak, more air than force.

“Shut up, Arthur,” Eames bites out. The heat of him where he’s pressed to Arthur’s side rages, the space between their faces suddenly so liminal, gone in a gust of wind. Arthur stares at Eames’ chin, at the hollow of his throat, the way it moves as if Eames can’t help the tension, tendons slipping into view, creating shadows and vanishing just as fast. Eames’ mouth opens and something shivers low in his throat, a word that’s not a word. “Just…”

He snakes down, forces his mouth almost against Arthur’s, and pulls up short, breathing harshly over his cheek. Holds him in place with an iron grip. And then, a gust of released motion, his hands begin to move.

“Every time—you treat me like I’m gone—” Eames can’t keep steady, every break punctuated by wrenching at Arthur’s clothing, hair, body. “I can’t—” And _there,_ his voice cracks. But he keeps going, grabs Arthur in a fierce hold, a hand tight at his nape, thumb forcing his jaw up—

And kisses him.

The roughness chafes Arthur’s mouth. Bruises his teeth behind his lips. For the longest moment in the world, it’s jagged, ugly. Perfect. 

Eames pulls back, breathing too hard, _shaking._

Arthur’s throat closes, leaving his lungs aching. Eames’ teeth clamp onto Arthur’s lower lip and Arthur’s mouth drops open, all thought whiting out. The taste of metal trips over his tongue, cruel. Eames doesn’t wait. He plunders Arthur’s mouth instead, rougher than anything, painful and harsh and clarifying.

Oh, _god,_ so much more fucking lucid.

“You’re my bedrock, you can _not_ do this to me now.” Eames sounds forced, short of breath and afraid. “The only reason I haven’t gone insane is because of you—”

Arthur drags Eames against his mouth, fixes it, kisses him right. It’s the opposite of perfect, and it’s filling up a hole that Arthur didn’t know existed, gaping and awful in the center of him, eating through his spine. He can hear each of Eames’ gasped breaths, strange little sounds, and knows he’s making them, too. The noises bounce off each other, swallowed up between their mouths, tucked into the spaces between their bodies. Eames rips through one of Arthur’s buttons and it skitters off, clacking along the floor. Arthur lunges up into him and Eames grunts, yanks him in, devours his mouth and forces them together as though he’s trying to force them into each other. 

Arthur’s more aware of the way his body is being bared for him, his shirt stripped harshly from his shoulders, skin tight and shivery from being damp for so long, fumbling Eames out of his jeans, digging his fingers into hot flesh and swaths of purpling ink, hands twisted in his hair until it burns, feet stumbling over hardwood. The light is different when he opens his eyes again, Eames’ bedroom with the curtains drawn back and the rain lashing wrathfully over the glass, so heavy the outside world is nothing but a blur. The bed slithers under the reflection, ripples and rivulets, and Arthur can’t tell where the sheets end and the floor begins. Eames drops back onto the mattress, a hand still clenched in Arthur’s jeans, tugging them wide open and jerking Arthur’s hips forward. He’s naked, pale lines and curls of darkness, his eyes open and fixed upon Arthur’s face.

Awareness glides in, as pungent as sage. Arthur sucks in a deep breath. Shudders backward, and wavers on the edge of a razor.

“Don’t you _even,”_ Eames rasps, holding him fast. Then hauling him down.

Arthur lets him.

**

He wakes up achy, the core of him indefinably bone-tired until he realizes there’s no one else in the bed with him. And that there should be.

Arthur clenches his hand in rumpled bedclothes. The sheet clings to his hips in a sultry, sticky way he recognizes, a magnet to his body. He lifts it away slowly and looks down at himself for a long moment.

He aches in other ways. There’s a dull burn in his groin and a not unpleasant stiffness in the length of his thighs, like he’s run too long or lifted something too heavy. The skin of his belly and shoulders is tender, and between his legs, where contact was greatest. At the hooks of his hips lies the sting of bruises.

He remembers all of it, all the sounds that broke from Eames’ lips as if they’re playing on repeat in his head.

Nausea creeps.

It blooms fully when he remembers the way Eames kissed him. The way those sounds broke over _his_ lips and the fact that they were actually words.

Arthur rolls onto his stomach until his face presses into the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. But he can smell Eames in the pillow case and flips onto his back again. Above him, the ceiling is white, far too blank.

Who is he, that he’s done this? Because he has, he’s taken advantage of an untenable situation, like he’s trained himself to do, only this time it’s Eames, his friend, his colleague. His—

Arthur presses his hands over his eyes.

Whatever else it was, it wasn’t appropriate to let things fall that far. To allow Eames’ fear to determine what he, Arthur, did. To fail at derailing where it was going before it got there. He’s a fucking point man, he’s Eames’ point man. The only thing he has wanted in all of this is to look out for Eames, and instead he…

God, he’s being stupid. Eames is a grown man.

But still a man on shaky feet, injured and cornered, looking for anything he can grasp onto to right the inexorable fall.

Arthur feels sicker than ever.

Lying in Eames’ bed in the watery sunlight just makes it worse. Arthur pushes himself up. He finds his jeans by the foot of the bed and pulls them on, barely able to get the button done up because of the tremor in his fingers. His shirt is god knows where, probably out in the living room. Arthur steps around Eames’ clothing, or what made it into the bedroom, and wavers for a full ten seconds in the hallway before giving up and walking on. He has no idea where he’s heading. Just… elsewhere.

He finds Eames leaning on the windowsill in the living room, fingers empty but twitching as if they should be holding a cigarette. He’s looking out but not seeing, Arthur can tell by the queer light in his eyes. For all that, he looks untroubled, at least in the ways Arthur is troubled.

Beyond that… He’s in jeans that hang low on his hips so that each breath is visible in the shift of his stomach. No shirt. No socks; his toes are pale over the carpet. His neck is a smooth line, his throat a fragile curve that only accentuates the firmness of his spine. Faint marks, just two: there under his ear, there over the cusp of his shoulder, their flush all the more obvious next to the whorl of dark ink. Arthur remembers each whorl up close and feels his lungs hitch.

He thinks—there at Eames’ nape, sweeping up round the back of his ear—Eames’ hair is thinning.

Eames’s eyes track to him; nothing else moves, not head nor body. Arthur can only stare back.

He’s never needed words on the job. Others make their living by talking, by explaining and coaxing, but Arthur has always relied upon observation to tell him what he needs to know and silence to convey everything else. Now he feels the lack of this one skill like a lack of water. He thirsts for words, every vein reaches for sounds he can’t form.

He clings, more fiercely than he ever has to anything, to the fact that Eames is still here, in his home. Though how long that will last if he doesn’t define this, _fix_ this…

“Are we—” Arthur halts, hand out in a gesture that keeps going without him. It’s a lousy start. He clamps it off, but the lack of motion is even more intrusive.

Eames’ mouth shivers. He squints, and slowly his expression evolves into a faint smirk.

“That wasn’t what I meant to do,” Arthur states at last. It’s out. It’s the truth. He both regrets and doesn’t regret it, and it doesn’t resolve anything.

“S’alright, Arthur.” Eames’ voice sounds calm, lilting in the direction of pleasant. Or bittersweet. Arthur swallows as Eames steps back, looks down as if searching for a place to snuff his imaginary cigarette. “It was what I meant to do.”

Arthur wants to hit him, to knock it into him that he’s _dying._ Whatever else happens, treatment or recovery, right now at this second, he’s dying. And Arthur can’t handle it. It makes him so furious, so envious that Eames can.

“Don’t treat it like it’s nothing,” he croaks, talking about the cancer, talking about what Eames is doing to him, to all of them.

But Eames just raises his eyebrows. “And here I rather thought it was?”

He’s asking, he’s… not talking about the same thing.

“Eames,” Arthur breathes, and it shakes.

Whatever he might have done last night, whatever wrongs he might have committed, _he doesn’t want it to be nothing._ For the first time, he feels like there’s something he can do. For Eames. For himself. It’s base and useless and won’t heal Eames for even an instant.

It’s all he can do.

He doesn’t know what his face looks like until Eames’ expression shifts, until Eames pushes away from the sill and crosses to Arthur’s side, and circles Arthur’s arm in his grip. He looks at Arthur with such raw concern, parts his lips to speak.

Arthur is the one who takes Eames’ face in his hands this time, who pulls him in.

**

The days creep and rush by at the same time. It’s amazing how the span of a month can warp when faced with what lies at the end of it.

Eames spends most of his time sick, even after the treatment has stopped. His hair does fall out, all of it, even his eyebrows. The change is arresting in a quiet, soft way that Arthur can’t get used to. Every time, he expects to see the Eames he has always known, and every time, he is pulled up fast and made to look again. To take it in with a speeding heartbeat.

It _is_ Eames, and it’s not. It’s a changing Eames. Arthur sees it happening right before his eyes, finds it in the hairs curling around the shower drain, smells it on Eames when he’s close enough. He can see it in the reddened patches of Eames’ skin. He can hear it when Eames has to work a little bit harder to swallow something as simple as water.

And then there are things Arthur recognizes so intensely that it shocks him into stillness. Things he’s known for years and never knew he valued.

Eames’ smile is the same, when it comes. The way he rests his chin on his hand so that his fingers curl over his lower lip. The way he watches Arthur, and how long has Arthur been so completely unaware? Has he really been unaware at all, or is this something he wanted so badly his mind made it into a memory?

At night, with Eames’ eyes wide open in the darkness, the heave of his chest under Arthur’s hands and the heat of his body tucked sweaty to Arthur’s at the hips, at the belly, at the mouth and the nooks of knees and the damp, delicate arcs of throats—Arthur feels like he’s seeing too much, an abundance that will circle back and take its pound of flesh right when he most needs this little shard of comfort.

Eames’ body is something Arthur wishes he’d explored long ago. The tattoos alone draw his eye as well as his fingers. His mouth. He fits lips to curve, tongue to tracery, feels the glide of skin over bone and muscle when Eames sucks in a sudden breath. Sees it like watery ripples when the shadows lie just right.

The way Eames groans his name when he comes is both brutal and fragile. The press of his fingers for that interminable instant is like a memento of a long-faded dream.

Two weeks go by in fits of thunderstorms and humidity. Eames’ strength decreases, grounds him on the couch during daylight, the bed at night. One day, Arthur goes to the store for their weekly run and finds himself on a park bench with an arm slung across the top, wondering how he got to this point in his life, how he is once again functioning on his own in terms of day-to-day tasks, how the solitude feels different now, even though he’s always pretty much done this anyway.

After a while, he gets to his feet and makes his way home with the groceries.

**

Surgery is scheduled, and Arthur and Eames begin the process of ignoring it until it is un-ignorable. There are days where Eames has difficulty keeping down a glassful of water. He’s lost his muscle definition, thinned in the face and shoulders, the waist. It was shockingly quick. Eames starts wearing sweaters around the house, and socks on his feet despite the summer heat.

Sometimes Arthur catches him with his poker chip, turning it over and over, sometimes just squeezing it between finger and thumb like he intends to crush it.

And there are quite a few nights where Eames doesn’t want sex. Arthur can’t possibly take it personally. His own libido, fashioned out of desperation and a newly fragile heart, is more than willing to follow Eames’ lead, rearing hot the instant Eames’ kiss changes in just that way, fading at the first withering sigh, the first darkening of pain across Eames’ brow.

Arthur tries not to, but it’s too late: he’s falling, hard and slow and terrified.

** 

The room is full of white machinery and white computer consoles. Flashes of silver shape the equipment out of all that nothingness, and Arthur stands in the much darker monitor room, looking through the glass as Eames’ scans slowly wind to completion.

The thought is as invasive as the growth itself: that they will turn on the monitors and find Eames’ body riddled with strange amorphous shapes, the offspring of the thing in his head. Arthur’s glad he’s not holding Eames’ hand, because he can’t control how hard his fingers are clenching.

Beside him, the doctor studies the screens, speaks to Eames through the microphone, ticks keys on the keyboard. He comments to the technician and Arthur presses his thumb hard against his lip in lieu of chewing his nail. An age later, the machine begins its steady motion again, opening up. When it’s done, Eames pushes upright, adjusting the neck of his hospital gown. He sits with his legs hanging off the side and his hands resting in his lap. He smiles faintly at Arthur through the window while the doctor confers with the tech, and then finally calls him in.

Eames is clean.

They go out for dinner afterward. Or they try to, at least. In the end, Arthur gets their order to go and takes it out to where Eames waits in the passenger seat, leaning against the door. They eat some of it right there in the parking lot, doors open and Arthur handing napkins over for Eames to wipe his fingers with. The smell of garlic bread permeates. Eames licks his fingers with a tiny groan and sits back, shutting the container on half of his linguini with pesto.

“Fuck, that’s good.”

Arthur nearly asks after the last piece of bread, but the words slide away. He looks down at his own box, at the mizithra farfalle inside, then cups Eames’ nape and guides him around. Kisses the taste of garlic from his lips. When he lets him go, Eames leans back, watchful, and Arthur starts the car. Takes them home.

They end up in bed, sitting against the headboard with Styrofoam containers propped on their knees. Eames falls asleep with his head on Arthur’s stomach, an arm settled across Arthur’s hips.

**

The Monday before the operation, Eames packs up a shoulder bag with a couple changes of clothing, all loose and comfortable. He picks through his drawers, discarding pairs of socks, adding others to the bag. Takes two books down from the shelf by the closet and compares, then tosses one onto the mattress. Arthur sits on the end of the bed, both wanting and not wanting to move.

“Is there anyone I should call?”

Eames looks thoughtful, then he smiles. Shakes his head and goes back to his packing. He’s humming when Arthur leaves the room.

Arthur puts on a pot of coffee, then stands in the kitchen and waits while it perks away, filling the air with its rich aroma. He pours himself a cup when it’s barely finished and holds it steaming in front of his face.

 _What do you need?_ Words from what feels like ages ago, a question that did nothing but offend him then. Now… now it feels like it has finally taken on its third dimension. Now Arthur can hear it, and actually consider an answer. He knows it’s not his place to tell anyone what’s going on. Eames alone should decide who’s aware of specifics and who isn’t. 

It’s a long while before Arthur realizes he needs to tell someone anyway, not for Eames’ sake, but for his own.

**

“What happens if you don’t survive?”

It’s not a relief to give it utterance. It just sits there between them, tangled with the sheets, alighting on their fingers where Arthur has twisted them together. Arthur stares at the ceiling, feeling dulled down and empty, like the recent sex has sucked every iota of his personality from his body.

Eames shifts next to him. Arthur can feel the heat of their thighs pressed together. Whether it’s the surgery that ends it or the cancer itself doesn’t matter to the hugeness of the question, and Arthur has to work hard to swallow. He doesn’t know what he meant anyway.

“I don’t know,” Eames says at last. It’s so honest, so simple, it prickles tears into Arthur’s eyes. He wipes his face without thinking, and Eames turns into him, aligns their bodies from shoulder to knee and lays his hand flat on Arthur’s chest.

“I don’t know,” Eames says again. This time the words run together, tripping at the end. Arthur realizes Eames is crying, too. He rolls, twists himself around Eames and pulls them as close as he can get them, sheets getting in the way, his back bare and cold where the blanket has bunched up. He can feel the speed of Eames’ heart, the arrhythmia of their breathing.

“I don’t want—” Eames manages brokenly against Arthur’s shoulder.

Arthur scrambles, turns Eames’ face up and kisses the words silent, too hard to be tender, too desperate not to be. He tucks Eames back, hugs his lover’s face to the curve of his throat and blinks at the wall.

“You _won’t,”_ he promises, half a breath, not knowing what he believes will happen anymore.

**

The day before Eames checks into the hospital, Arthur’s doorbell rings. He answers it with hands damp from unloading the dishwasher, thinking about a million things, and there is Dominic Cobb, standing silently on his doorstep, a rolling suitcase at his side.

At the sight of his oldest friend in the world, Arthur’s barricades disintegrate. He steps forward, and his legs wobble. Dom pulls him to his shoulder with a hand gentle behind his head, and holds him while he sobs. 

**

Dom stays through the surgery and after, cooking all their meals and keeping Arthur’s place clean while Arthur camps out at the hospital and then readies to bring Eames home.

The procedure goes more quickly than Arthur expected. But then, he expected any waiting to be horrifically endless. It’s almost businesslike, the way the surgeon explains where they’re at now that it’s done, and then leaves Arthur to collect himself, Dom sitting watch a chair away.

Once Eames is squared away in Intensive Care, Arthur stands just inside the doorway of his room, hands in his pockets. He feels like he could look forever, because there Eames is, breathing through a tube, his heart ticking away. He’s pale and swollen, and way too thin. And though Arthur’s been assured that the intubation is standard procedure, it still churns at his gut to see the tube taped to Eames’ cheek. The cuffs around his calves whirr and deflate in a rhythm, helping his circulation, and his entire body looks tired, like he’s become part of the bed, but… it’s done. This, at least, is done.

Sometime later, Arthur wanders back into the waiting room, aimless and skittish. Hungry. Amped up but unwilling to go anywhere that takes him beyond spitting distance of Eames’ room.

It’s then, so completely disconnected, that he thinks to ask what Dom has done with his kids. Dom tells him complacently that they’re with their grandfather for an extended stay. It’s intensely sobering, that Dom would let go of the children he fought so hard and so long to get back, for him. For them.

Bringing Eames home is anticlimactic, but by the time it happens, Arthur is too tired and too relieved to remember that it might have been otherwise. Eames slips in and out of sleep as Arthur drives, limbs loose and heavy from the drugs. He makes no sign of recognition when Arthur stops the car outside the house, when Arthur comes around and helps him out, when Arthur and Dom bring him in through the front door and guide him down the hall to Arthur’s bedroom. 

His head is wrapped neatly in gauze that Arthur has already changed twice at the nurse’s instructions. There have been no complications, no infection. Arthur gets Eames into bed while Dom goes out to collect their things from the car. He feels the skin at Eames cheeks for extra heat.

Eames blinks. His eyes are clouded, lids so hooded they’re almost closed. “Arth…”

“Shh.” Arthur takes his hand carefully. Smoothes his bare forehead again. “S’alright. We’re at home.”

Eames swallows. Even that is an effort, the true sound of pain. He mumbles something and squeezes Arthur’s hand. The lack of strength in his grip is the worst part of all. Arthur turns Eames’ hand over in his and studies the ridges of his bones.

** 

Eames doesn’t sleep as much as Arthur wishes he would.

There’s pain, some headaches. A strange sort of wakefulness that the doctor warned might have to do with prolonged Somnacin use. Arthur worries about sharing the bed in Eames’ discomfited state, but Eames apparently isn’t as bothered by someone resting next to him. When he does sleep, it’s alarmingly deep and only for the shortest of stints, his breathing slowing to a rate that keeps Arthur’s eyes on him.

Arthur’s mood jumps on the second day when Eames murmurs that he’s hungry, and then plummets a half hour later when Eames vomits the meager offering up, heaving desperately over the toilet bowl. Even the basest oatmeal is too rich. Arthur holds Eames’ forehead, careful of the incision, watches the muscles of his back strain, and finally, once the shudders have eased, bends down to Eames’ shoulder and rests his head there. 

“Sorry.”

He feels Eames shake his head. Hears him swallow twice. “No. Tasted heavenly. While it lasted.”

Arthur straightens, and by accident, they sigh lengthily together. “Get you back to bed?”

Eames doesn’t answer or move for a long while, swaying on his knees on the bathroom rug, until Arthur cottons on to the cinch of his mouth. “I’m ready to sleep, too,” he offers. It’s so out of place, there in the middle of nothing. But the way Eames smiles around the weariness takes all that away.

When Eames is awake, Arthur guides him through the breathing exercises the nurses instructed him to do while in the ICU. He digs out a stethoscope from an early job and listens to Eames’ lungs for the eerie crackle of pneumonia, at first without much in the way of reaction, and then to tolerant smirks that ghost through Arthur’s insides and make him hurt with how much he longs to see Eames’ real grin. But Eames doesn’t stop him, and he doesn’t complain about the deep breathing or the walks around the house, or the inability to go outside.

Cleaning Eames’ wound is easy. It’s a neat little incision, tacked up with stitches that will fall off on their own. There’s no infection, and the swelling goes down quickly, returning Eames’ cheeks to the gauntness of before. Arthur falls asleep against the headboard with Eames leaning against him one evening, and wakes slowly. The whole situation is so comfortable, so familiar, that it takes him an entire minute to remember why Eames’ head has a square of gauze secured to it.

**

It’s surprisingly simple to let Yusuf into his house. While some of Arthur’s walls have been bolstered since Eames’ diagnosis, others have dropped permanently away. His issue with Yusuf seems to fall into the latter category. Perhaps it’s his exhaustion dictating at first, but eventually, Arthur finds anger too difficult to maintain.

Yusuf brings physician-approved pain medication as a peace offering on his first visit, as well as something herbal that helps Eames sleep. Normal rest, the kind the body never gets in the hospital but desperately needs in order to heal. For that alone, Arthur is more grateful than Yusuf will ever know. If the man had demanded it after Eames drifted off the first time, Arthur would have given him the sun itself.

The fact is, Yusuf isn’t a malicious person. And it’s apparent that he cares about Eames.

It’s awkward, though. Arthur takes satisfaction in that. It’s especially so when, with only a day’s overlap, Dom packs up and heads home. He’s been gone from his kids for almost two weeks, and by now, Eames is able to shift for himself well enough in most things.

Yusuf never stays the night. He grabs a hotel a neighborhood over and retires there in the evenings. But once Dom leaves, it’s only Arthur and Yusuf while Eames sleeps, and Yusuf is well aware of the debts he has to pay. Arthur feels a calm sense of power, not having to say a word to know that Yusuf understands: he’s there because Eames still vouches for him, and because he’s made himself useful. It’s a role he seems to relish.

But.

Now that Arthur is still, there’s time for other things to slip in. 

Waking up with his heart racing, worried simply because he’s used to being worried, is only the beginning. Next to him, Eames sleeps serenely, nostrils flaring as he breathes, and Arthur listens to that natural ebb and flow until his pulse sinks back, until the moonlight washes cool instead of ominous over Eames’ profile.

It takes him two weeks, two weeks and a phone call, leaning against the railing of the balcony. The weather’s too warm for anything more than shorts and a tee, and the heaviness of a storm hangs like fog. Arthur sways from foot to foot as he waits on hold, one eye on the door. He left Eames in the kitchen, one foot kicked up on the rung of the opposite chair, elbow braced on bent knee to read a well-thumbed copy of _Gone With the Wind._ At least he’s eating now, with interest if not enthusiasm.

“Mr. Miller, I’m sorry for the wait. I have a twelve o’clock and a two-thirty available tomorrow.” 

Eames passes out these days around two and sleeps till four. Arthur scratches the back of his neck. Below, a car honks. “Two-thirty’ll work.”

“Alright, we’ll see you then. Have a pleasant rest of your day.”

He’s in the waiting room by 2:15 the following afternoon, and Eames’ doctor ushers him in ahead of schedule. It’s cold in the clinic, and when he lies down on bare plastic in nothing but his boxers and the flimsy smock, he feels it to his bones. He shuts his eyes while the machine works. Thinks about the shape of Eames’ lips at the corner of his own. The graze of Eames’ fingers over the small of his belly. 

Afterward, the doctor shows him the scans, lets Arthur scroll through them himself. Points out all the normality. “I’ll run it by my colleague tomorrow if you like, let you know what she thinks.” 

He doesn’t ask again if Arthur’s had symptoms he’s anxious about, just watches and waits until Arthur’s satisfied.

He’s buttoning his shirt when the doctor returns to the exam room. Arthur clears his throat and shakes the man’s hand. “I sincerely appreciate this.”

“If you have any concerns at all, any questions, don’t hesitate to call.”

Arthur heads home. It’s barely 4:00.

It doesn’t dig in till after he gets out of the car in his own driveway: he can’t remember the ride. Not the route he took or the people who crossed the road in front of him. He can’t recall if he even stopped at any lights. Arthur clenches the edge of the door as it all finally sweeps up, tapping at the backs of his knees and plucking at the over-stretched muscles that keep him standing. 

He breathes unsteadily until he can let go of the car, then shunts it into the back of his mind and heads up the walk.

Opening the front door finds Yusuf in the easy chair and Eames on the couch, tucked up in that way he likes with his legs bent, a cushion in the hollow of his lap. He’s laughing with his head tilted back, throat bared and beautiful. Ariadne struggles up from another chair, running to Arthur and wrapping him in her arms.

“Hello!” she says, breathless and cheerful.

“We brought food,” Yusuf puts in, and Eames leans his head over the back of the couch to look at Arthur.

Arthur smiles at him. “Then you can stay.”

Ariadne smacks him on the arm.

It’s good to see her again.

** 

Arthur gets his final results via voicemail a day later, a chirp as he shoulders a bag down onto the table, hands full of deli sandwiches for their lunch. He listens to the message as rain taps on the window and thunder rumbles moodily outside. When it’s done, he stands for an immeasurable moment, then toes off his shoes and walks down the hall to his room. Eames is asleep, placid on his back in the gray light, a pillow in the embrace of one arm.

Arthur settles beside him as he snores, and runs his thumb in slow circles behind Eames’ ear.

**

The first bill for the surgery does not come, and it does not come. Arthur finally calls the hospital’s billing office while Eames and Yusuf are out wandering the neighborhood. He finds that not only is no first payment due, the entire amount for the operation, the treatment, and any further expenditure has been taken care of.

His next call is answered in three rings.

“Mr. Saito,” he starts, and doesn’t know how to finish. The house is quiet. The hum of insects drones through the window. 

“Thank you,” he finally says into the waiting silence. “Very much.”

“Arthur,” Saito answers, “you are most welcome.”

Nothing for a bit. Arthur knows his next question must be audible.

Sure enough, Saito responds. “You understand, I believe, the reality of possessing a great deal of money, and no family.”

“Yes.” He does. Did.

“Do you also know the reality of a priceless and unexpected gift?” Saito pauses. “Offered by extraordinary people.”

“Saito,” Arthur starts. He’s not extraordinary, and it was a job, one among many, no matter what came out of it. It was betrayal and pain, and death. A lifetime that should never have been forced upon a tourist who’d never walked their world before.

“You believe, I think,” Saito interrupts, “that what you impart is not special. Perhaps it is the criminality that chafes, abrades what you do to the bareness it becomes. To me, it was a crucial lesson that most never have a chance to learn.” There are decades upon decades in that pronouncement, fantasy and nightmare. Arthur knows, in that instant, that he will never hear any of it. 

Saito draws a sedate breath. “The owing here has always been mine. It is a debt I feel I will never fully repay.”

When Arthur ends the call, he holds his phone for a while, staring down at the blank screen.

**

Treatment begins again. It’s another few weeks of sick nights and listless days, but this round of radiation packs less of a punch, and Eames’ body does not reject it. Maybe Arthur’s nerves just aren’t on fire anymore, but Eames’ skin never quite reaches the shade of gray that it did before the operation. 

Eames eats. He doesn’t always throw it back up. He gains a little weight. This time around, Arthur feels it every time Eames climbs out of bed in favor of the bathroom. It’s less often than he remembers.

And then it’s done. It’s _done._

**  
**  
**

The last scan is two days old. Arthur knows he’ll spend the first week coming down off of it like some bad trip. He did it before, at the two-month mark, then again at four. The doctor is keeping closer tabs on Eames because of his unusual circumstances, and Arthur has a system. Today is all about looseness. Of muscles, of thought, of focus. The weight hangs at the outer edges, and he can feel it—he thinks he’ll never be able to not feel it—slinking closer. But it’s still a ways off, a tiny bit farther than last time.

Six months and Eames is clean. Arthur doesn’t want to think at all, not for another few days. Today he’ll sit, a glass of iced tea in hand, and figure out a new layout for the living room.

Out on the balcony, Eames sniffs. “Why?”

Arthur shrugs. “Could do with some change.”

“Arthur,” Eames grates, turning halfway around. His pointer and middle finger tap manically together on the railing, and the missing element between them is obvious. “Go pick up a fucking job.”

It’s the first time dreamshare has been mentioned so bluntly. Arthur frowns at his glass, then at Eames. “Is that what you think I need?”

Eames leans back on the rail with his arms braced on either side. There’s nothing remotely relaxed about the posture. The physical therapy has smoothed his movements, but Arthur can still see the caution in them. Eames lowers his chin and stares balefully. “Not near enough to what you need, but it’ll do.”

Arthur pushes out of the chair, stretching his back through an exquisite cascade of pops. “Then I’m sorry. It’s not happening.”

“If you’re bored—”

“I’m not,” Arthur states, sharply enough to razor through Eames’ words. Eames eyes him, and Arthur stares back, and for a while, there’s nothing but that tug and pull that always used to be strung up between them.

“Don’t you dare pity me,” Eames growls.

Even though Arthur knew it was coming, he never expected the actual sentence, the way the words bite into each other. His chest cinches up, tighter than anger, so far away from anger that it wheels back around and tries to become anger anyway.

Arthur crosses the room, right through the door and up into Eames’ face. He grabs Eames’ hand and flattens it to the railing, stills that frenzied tremulo. Eames inhales, his chest swelling beneath the tank top. Arthur can feel the heat of him like a pulse.

“I do not pity you.” He manages it softly, each word on its own. Eames stares hard into his eyes, and Arthur is beyond thankful that it’s the god’s honest truth. That’s not what this is about. This is a much colder and deeper river than pity. 

“Don’t you?” But it’s a real question, not a challenge. And Arthur realizes that Eames… For the first time, Eames is on the verge of pitying himself.

He changes his grip, encircles Eames’ wrist. He can feel tendons twitch. “This is not about you,” he whispers.

It is about Eames, but not in the ways that matter. Not the way Eames thinks it is. The score Arthur feels settling was only waiting for a catalyst.

“What’s it about, then?” Eames murmurs it, like he murmurs into Arthur’s ear when he’s so deep in him that Arthur’s skin is a never-ending sea of gooseflesh. Arthur can’t tell what he’s feeling anymore. It might very well be anger, but it’s coiled so fiercely around whatever it’s hiding that the idea of releasing it aches.

He meets Eames’ eyes instead, and Eames stills, a slow cessation of movement. If this isn’t about Eames, then there’s only one thing it can be about, and Eames is intelligent enough to put those halves together.

Arthur turns away in the second Eames’ mouth opens, the instant his eyes change. He feels the breath exhaled behind him, a rush across his nape. But Eames doesn’t attempt to stop him, and Arthur is glad for that. 

** 

Eames catches him in the hallway, though, takes his wrist as Arthur took Eames’ a moment before, and turns him around. Nothing about it is strained in any way. Arthur finds himself folded into Eames’ arms. Eames presses his mouth firmly to Arthur’s brow and holds him still, one hand against the back of his head. His breath shifts through Arthur’s hair. Arthur curls his fingers round the hem of Eames’ tank top, just over his shoulder blade.

Eames smells like the detergent Arthur uses, like sage. Like Arthur’s home.

He chokes, and covers it over by shifting his grip. Grabbing hold.

**

If Yusuf had been the one to suggest it, Arthur would have gone straight back to hating him.

“Like to try it,” Eames says, casual, running his finger around the rim of his glass. Arthur looks up from his tablet, then straightens fully in his chair.

“What, now?”

Eames looks at him warily. “Is that even an option?”

It isn’t. Arthur may still have his PASIV tucked under the floorboards in the pantry, but he has nothing to fill it with. And, if he’s honest with himself, no pressing desire to change that. “Don’t have the Somnacin.”

Eames relaxes. It’s subtle, but Arthur focuses in, picking the reaction apart. It’s gone before the conclusions solidify, and he’s left staring Eames in the eye. A morbid curiosity settles into his belly. He taps the tablet off and pushes it away.

“You feel up to that?”

Eames shrugs, and it’s so _him,_ from ages ago, that Arthur trips over his next breath. “Won’t know till I’m in.”

It’s how he’s run his entire life since the diagnosis, and Arthur has been witness to this truth again and again. Eames takes the first step and then finds the strength there waiting to help him finish.

“What does the doctor say?”

“That it’s been long enough for the site to heal completely, and that the other medication is long out of my system by now.”

Arthur fingers the edge of his tablet. “You’re not taking anything for the headaches anymore?”

“Stopped when I stopped having them.”

Arthur’s not entirely convinced the headaches _have_ stopped, but he also knows Eames has experienced much worse pain than this. They both have.

“Yusuf has a low grade blend,” Eames starts.

“You talked to Yusuf?”

Eames meets his eyes. “Only to find out if he thought it was safe.”

“You’re not paying him for it, are you?” Arthur mutters.

“He’s doing it for free,” Eames answers, patient, like he knows exactly what Arthur’s thinking.

Good. 

Arthur’s going with him. He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.

**

The sky is pale as cream, the blue washed out by the sun as it dwindles downward. Arthur imagines grass in velvet gold, feels Eames coax it into the roll of foothills, and it is so like the way Eames touches his body that he lets himself loose in it, eyes closed, deep breaths.

When he opens his eyes at last, he nods, and Eames tries to forge.

He can’t. Not even a flicker.

They stand in the field together as the sun sets, and they don’t speak.

That night, it’s Arthur whose eyes blur as he makes love to Eames, Eames gasping soothing half-words into his hair. There are certain sounds Eames slurs around now. In the heat of sex, Arthur can hear it plain as day. He presses his thumb to sweaty skin, the rapid flutter of the pulse in Eames’ throat, and feels shame, to be glad of these losses if they were the price for what he gets to keep.

It takes a week before Eames explodes.

Five tumblers and an entire stack of plates explode along with him, shearing across the kitchen tile. Eames kicks the cupboard where the rice cooker sits ten times, each one harder than the last. He nearly puts his foot through, leaves sagging wood in his wake. He screams ferociously enough to crack his voice. He overturns the table and one chair before staggering into the remaining one, heaving from exertion, face red and body trembling.

He drops his head into one hand and cries as silently as Arthur did.

Arthur, who has watched the storm brewing over the last seven days, who has kept his mouth shut when Eames has snapped at him, given space when Eames’ spines are out—Arthur comes closer then, kneels on the floor between Eames’ knees and wraps him in his arms.

**

Maybe it’ll come back to him. Maybe his body just needs time to heal, to get over the shock of such an invasion.

Or maybe something is permanently altered in Eames’ brain, and there’s no going back to what used to be.

**

Eames slides down his body slowly. His hands trail behind, heady heat against Arthur’s sides. He mouths the top of Arthur’s thigh where it joins his pelvis, pauses and smiles, meeting Arthur’s eyes.

Arthur shudders. His other knee bends, rises on its own. He strokes the side of Eames’ head from ear to nape, peach fuzz under his fingertips, and smiles back. Eames hooks a thumb into Arthur’s bare hip where any touch but this one tickles, and breaks eye contact. Takes Arthur into his mouth.

Arthur lifts his hips off the bed helplessly, a groan he can feel to his toes. He watches Eames’ hand circle his thigh and clasp there as if hugging it, shoulder fitting beneath his knee. Arthur clenches his calf, snugs not-so-gently. Presses Eames forward. Eames settles against the inside of his leg and holds him in place, then carries on until Arthur doesn’t recognize his own voice, until he feels fevered and melted, all the muscles that hold his thoughts inside puddling to liquid in the back of his throat. He starts to speak.

Eames shouldn’t be able to hear him, it’s so low, but Arthur knows he can: the too-swift cadence of it, the splintering of certain words, the heave behind others when Arthur’s mouth drops open and he shuts his eyes and arches and struggles to crest the tide… when he falls back without falling over it, shaking, curling his fingers over the skin beneath Eames’ ear, desperate to touch, to articulate _somehow_ what Eames is doing to him, not to his body but to everything that makes up the person he is. Eames says his name, he’s sure of it, without letting Arthur slip from his mouth, and Arthur feels it so deep down it _itches._ He sucks in a breath, Eames swallows and swallows again, and “that’s, Eames, you—” forced from him in a whoosh just before he comes and comes.

Eames slides up his body this time, that sinuous chameleon slither that yanked Arthur into his orbit the first time he saw Eames forge. Move. Be. Festering quietly inside until now, when Arthur can finally thread it all together, see it for what it really was and what it could lead to. Now, it becomes a physical, soulful sigh of relief.

Arthur lifts up into the kiss as Eames gives it, wraps his arms and legs around Eames and relishes the weight atop him.

When he remembers, he reaches down, wiggles an exhausted hand between them, but Eames breaks off with a laugh. “Darling, you’re all set. I’m long done.”

He is, limp and slick, pressed tight to Arthur’s belly. And still Eames cants his hips inexorably forward and Arthur’s question leaves him, a wordless sound as his body shifts across the sheets.

Eames kisses him below his ear. “You,” is all he says. Exhales, like he just can’t hold it in anymore.

**

Arthur quits.

He knows what they say about it: that it’s revenge, solidarity. Frustration at the community’s treatment of Eames.

The truth is, Arthur’s not interested in the job anymore. And maybe that will come back, too. Maybe one morning he’ll wake with that thrum in his veins again. Right now, on this day, he doesn’t care.

He’s done, and he’s sure.

**

Halfway through Yusuf’s next visit, Arthur gets up and comes in from the balcony with his finger stuck in one of Eames’ books, in time for Eames to shout Yusuf down.

“—never thought to check. To _examine_ what your bloody drugs might be doing to the human brain!”

Yusuf says nothing. Eames paces away, eyeing Yusuf like a big cat waiting for a strike, then throws the newspaper he holds onto the floor and stalks out the front door.

Yusuf bends and picks up the paper—front page—smoothing its fold with careful hands.

Arthur shuts the sliding door with a bang and points after Eames. “Did he just blame you for the tumor?” he demands, still not sure whose side he’s going to come down on.

“No.” Yusuf shakes his head. “He didn’t go that far.”

Arthur rubs his forehead. “For not being able to forge, then.” He drops down onto the couch.

“Mm.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Arthur leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It’s a strange impulse, but a strong one. “He doesn’t mean it, Yusuf.”

Yusuf looks oddly unperturbed. He gazes at the front door. “I know.”

Eventually Eames returns, looking beaten and sick in a way wholly other than what the radiation caused. He stares at Yusuf from the front hall, holding still as though they’ll lose sight of him if he just doesn’t move. And then he moves anyway, into the bedroom with a chilling finality. It drags Arthur upright, halfway to the hall before he checks himself.

Yusuf shakes his head and waves him on, cheeks flushing.

The door isn’t locked. Arthur pushes it open and shuts it behind him. He expects absolute stillness, but Eames is all movement, tracking from window to bureau and back, a steady pace with no release. Arthur sits down on the bed and watches. There’s nothing particularly frenzied about it. Just walking.

“I got a scan of my head,” he says.

At the window, Eames swivels slowly to face him. He looks Arthur over, and it’s then that Arthur can’t find the right words. It’s the way Eames’ face is drawing down, bending into old, sick lines that finally forces his voice.

“There’s nothing. Nothing there.”

Eames’ thumb presses into the bureau’s edge until it turns white. “Were you planning to tell me?”

“No.” Yes. Arthur shrugs and looks away. 

“Well.” Eames’ eyes bore into him. “That’s lovely.”

Arthur sighs. “You asked me once what I needed.” Arthur knows that he was too much of a fool then to accept the kindness with palms wide. It seems like a different person who turned it—turned Eames—aside, a different lifetime. “That was what I needed.”

“A scan.”

“To know, Eames. I needed to know I was clean.” _I needed to know I wasn’t going to put you through what I’m going through._ He stares back at Eames, finds himself soaking him in, for god’s sake, it never lets up. 

“And I needed… I need,” he corrects, and sees Eames decide not to interrupt. Arthur tries to stop winding his hands together. “I need you to focus on you. Not me. Not—” He waves at his own head. “This. It was a moment of weakness, Eames, and now it’s done, and what I need is you, healing.”

He could have been more eloquent. He doesn’t know what else he could have said, though. Spine-deep imperatives never sound as they should, out loud.

“I don’t want to focus on me, Arthur.” Eames sounds off, the words strained far past discomfort. “When I do that—” He jerks a hand over his head and stops, grimaces at it. Arthur realizes it’s because he was expecting hair, and that hurts, a bruise to the center of his chest. Eames turns in place, looks up and takes a shuddery breath. When he faces Arthur again, close enough now that their knees brush, his eyes are carved apart like they were during treatment.

Arthur imagines years of dreaming on point without Eames at his side, without the tide of personalities, the faces Eames wears as well as his own. Today is full of pain he doesn’t want to feel anymore, but beyond that reality is an even worse injury, lying large and plain just within sight.

Every time Eames gets a scan, the possibilities will flare up in Arthur again. They’ll probably be there for the rest of Eames’ life.

“You,” Arthur starts, and hitches, “mean more to me than a job, than what you can do. I don’t care if you never forge again. I don’t care if I never dream. I do care, more than I can articulate, if I wake up in the morning, and all I see is your face. _Your_ face, Eames.”

“You can’t do this,” Eames says hoarsely, swaying into the cradle of Arthur’s thighs. “Can’t say those things to me with him here.”

At this moment, Arthur couldn’t care less if Yusuf hears them.

**

They fall asleep after, Arthur entwined around Eames in ways that should make sleep impossible. In the middle of the night, he wakes to Eames’ mouth on his, and when they’re done again, they rest.

In the morning, Arthur gets up to find Yusuf and Eames chuckling together at the kitchen table over bowls of cereal.

**

Eames’ pencil scratches over the surface of the pad, and his eyes lift and fall again and again. Not his head or his chin, just his eyes. In the sunlight, Arthur can see the golden fuzz of new hair on his scalp, the healthy pinking of his skin.

“Will you teach me how to forge?” he asks.

Eames’ pencil halts and he lifts his head, unfolding like a leaf under the sun. There’s no trace of that cloudiness left, no dulling fog. Just clean subdued green.

“Sure,” he says after a moment.

Arthur isn’t certain what Eames is gleaning from his expression. He looks for bitterness, but the only spark in Eames’ eyes is contemplative.

**

Yusuf provides the Somnacin again, and the room—small, clean, and eggshell white with mint trim—with the most comfortable lounge chairs Arthur has ever sat in. Eames settles into his like he never left the business, hands folded across his belly and a faint smile curving his mouth. Arthur pushes his chair closer. He wants to be within reaching distance.

Eames holds out a wrist but Yusuf diverges, taking Eames’ pulse rate instead, then his blood pressure, and checking both eyes before hooking him into his line. Eames bears it all without a word. His gaze moves to Arthur partway through and holds.

Eames is the last thing Arthur sees before the Somnacin sucks them under.

It’s rolling green this time, and the sky is that milky warmth of just after sunrise. Down in the valley of two hills, a single piece of furniture sits in lush grass: Arthur’s bureau from back home, the one he pulled off a curb, with the cracked leg he mended and the antique mirror.

If he opened the top right drawer, he’d find his socks tumbled in rolled balls, black and white and gray.

Eames stops him in front of it and circles round behind him. The mirror is wide enough to show both their reflections. Eames’ eyes sweep sedately over Arthur, cataloguing. Remembering the method, Arthur thinks, but doesn’t ask. It’ll always be second nature to Eames to categorize, fix details in his mind in perfect echo. Eventually Eames speaks.

“People think the idea of the forge is to put on a costume. It’s the opposite, really; donning it as a costume would be like wriggling into someone else’s clothing, a shirt that’s too large, shoes that are too narrow. You can’t walk right, you keep tugging at hems, and eventually the whole thing rips right off and leaves you naked, holding a flimsy dock leaf. If you’re lucky.”

Arthur smirks and Eames’ mouth curves right back.

“The trick is to bring it up from under the surface. To make yourself the disguise. Refashion the mannequin instead of the clothing.”

“Change my body.” He knows he sounds disbelieving, and Eames’ nod takes that in.

“Do you remember, as a kid, that moment when your games were real, and the world around you was the colorless dream?”

“You mean my imagination.”

“Worlds, imaginary friends, voices you could actually hear.” He touches the side of Arthur’s head. “You’ve had it trained out of you. All children have. But for a time, there was an infinite moment where you straddled two realities. You have to straddle that line again. Artists are particularly good at forging. Writers, painters. Actors, not so much, except for the very singular ones. The scary sorts, who become their characters, speak in their characters’ voices, inhabit the minds they are trying to create.”

“Then it’s like method acting.”

Eames’ mouth arcs, displeased. “I’d rather you didn’t even associate it with acting at this point. There’s a reason I trail my targets so intimately. It’s not just to study the outer shell. I need to know how the target makes decisions, reacts to stimuli, extrapolates from the information presented. When I follow a man, I want to know his first impression of someone like me, who or what he’s willing to protect, what he would give everything for. The reasons he falls in love. Arthur.” He pauses, and steps closer. “If you learn to think like them, understand their insides, the outsides follow, flow on like skin.”

Arthur lets it settle, then nods once, watchful of Eames’ every tick, every clue. “So. Get to know them. Intimately.”

“Paramount.”

“And… inhabit their minds. Straddle two worlds.” He can feel his face twisting, dispelling. “Tall order to wrap your head around.”

Eames steps back, spreads both arms. “We are _in_ your head, darling.” 

He smiles.

Arthur considers it again, from other angles. The grass rustles. “Who am I forging?” 

“You’re going to forge me.” Eames comes closer, so close Arthur can feel the beat of his body heat. His eyes trail once over Arthur’s face, brow to chin. “Because I’m right in front of you. And you already know me.”

A rush of relief; he doesn’t think he knows anyone better. Maybe this won’t turn out badly after all. “Alright.”

Eames brushes Arthur’s cheek with the side of his finger. His reflection’s eyes lock to Arthur’s and he smiles again, softer. “Hands first. They’re the hardest to get right.”

It’s true in art as well. Arthur’s first try results in a stranger’s hands, though the size is correct as well as the length of the fingers. It’s like creating a gun, in a way, but the fit just feels wrong. Eames murmurs the word ‘gloves,’ and Arthur can’t help but agree. It’s like a chalky reptile skin stretched over his own, bearable but incorrect. He clears his mind, starts over, and this time begins with the impulse rather than the physical. How does Eames hold his hands, move his fingers? More importantly, why? The twitches and the tap of thumb to fingertip, the arc of his hand around the pencil he was using to draw, the way his fingers still jitter around a missing cigarette—Arthur focuses in on individual digits, then individual knuckles, glancing back and forth from Eames’ hands where they rest motionless on either side of him, not seeing so much as reimagining. He can feel the clean lines of Eames’ body behind him, his thighs brushing Arthur’s and his arms bracketing Arthur’s hips. It should be distracting in all the obvious ways, but it’s not. He can smell his lover, the scent as fragile as the very air.

Arthur finds it tricky to hold one aspect of his hands while working on another, and finally decides on a systematic approach, perfecting one detail, then the next and the next. He forgets from time to time, and remembers just as quickly: what Eames _wants_ when he curls his fingers, what Eames is thinking about when he splays his hands wide. Eames mutters advice in his ear as he goes, always exactly the tip Arthur needs. Eventually Arthur tries a whole finger, then a finger and thumb. Finger, thumb, and palm. Multitasking becomes easier.

Almost before he’s ready, there are two pairs of Eames’ hands before his eyes. Eames chuckles and kisses his cheek.

“Beautiful. You’re a very quick study.”

Arthur shrugs, fears he might lose the forge with the movement, but hangs onto it.

“Now.” Eames’ lips move against his jaw. “Upper body.” 

And he steps to the side.

**

After the extreme nuance of the hands, the rest of Eames’ body is relatively easy. Clothing is a joke to create—Arthur’s done it a million times just dropping into a dream—and what’s underneath doesn’t matter as much, as long as he’s not planning to get undressed. With the face and throat, it gets complicated again, but Arthur draws himself inward, relies on how much he instinctively knows about Eames rather than the tricks eyes play. He sees facial expressions in his mind—soft, intent, fixed, blank, incensed—and pictures the thought behind each one, the anger or the surprise, the shape of Eames’ mouth around his name. Within half an hour, Arthur has mastered an emotionless mask, and dislikes it enough to begin detailing immediately, the progress of which has Eames murmuring approval.

“You’re a bit brilliant, Arthur. Do you know that?”

“Yes.” Arthur works out one last imperfection in the lobe of Eames’ ear. “I do.”

Eames smiles wide, and Arthur—Arthur wants to make that look the rule again instead of the exception.

When it’s time to put it all together, Arthur feels a headache creeping in, looking for a place to take root. But he’s not going to stop now; he can almost taste Eames on his lips, he’s so close, as if he _is_ Eames after all. All of him, not just his appearance. There’s a frightening magnitude to that thought, one Arthur knows he’ll come back to later.

He relaxes, settles his shoulders into it. Feels his hands form and shuts his eyes. Slips the rest on, the emotion and not the appearance, like a brand new suit not quite cultivated to his body. It’s still an odd fit, almost too odd, and Arthur sets _Eames_ in his mind, the thought and smell and feel, even the flavor of him. The—sounds. He wonders… a split thought… whether anyone has ever been aroused by his or her own forge before.

At the same instant he hears the swallow beside him, Eames’ body stiffens, fingers closing minutely where they hook Arthur’s left elbow. Arthur opens his eyes.

Eames stares back at him from out of the mirror.

Arthur shakes. “Oh, _god—”_

Eames with a head full of hair. With—with a solid, healthy stretch to the shoulders of his jacket and a sharp light in his eyes that fades even as Arthur looks, as Eames’ full mouth drops open, utters the words in Arthur’s own voice, and the _other_ Eames, the thin, weary, aged Eames beside him with the same starving eyes just stares, face empty and full at the exact same moment.

Arthur loses it, pushes it away, aghast at himself and what he’s managed to do. He thinks about moving but can’t respond to the impulse. Can’t do more than stare at his own features and remember the Eames that is no longer Eames gaping back.

“I’m sorry—” It hisses out, a collapse of air as well as body: Arthur sags forward, catching himself on the bureau’s edge. Eames’ hand has not left his elbow. Arthur sucks in another breath. “I’m—”

 _“No.”_ The first one is firm, but then it’s followed, “No, no, no,” soft and soothing as toward a child. Eames gets an arm around his waist and rocks Arthur back into him instead, not a support so much as a necessity. Arthur feels Eames’ mouth glance across his temple, imagines that fullness again, now so out of its element in the face that holds it, and squeezes his eyes shut, his frame, his body because it hurts so fucking much to have—to have seen it again, to call it up, to have _done_ that.

To Eames. To himself.

“Arthur?”

He envisions himself turning, sliding his hand up to cup Eames’ nape, fitting them even more firmly together. But he still can’t move. The bureau’s edge bites into his palms and now he’ll never be able to look into that mirror back home and not see.

“Arthur, look.”

That’s a command, flat and precise. Arthur follows it because he must.

It’s just him in the mirror, and Eames, in his loose sweater with too-long sleeves, the white tee underneath the thready collar. And he’s not looking at Arthur in the mirror, he’s looking at Arthur himself, his reflected profile familiar and beautiful.

Arthur meets his eyes, looks from one to the other. “I’m so sorry.” 

Eames shakes his head. He draws a finger from Arthur’s temple to his chin, and curls it there against his skin. “Not offended, Arthur. Proud, rather.”

“Proud.” The word tastes sour.

“Proud.” Eames tightens his grip, pulls Arthur close enough to kiss his cheeks, to bury his nose in Arthur’s hair. “Congratulations.” 

Arthur stares at him. “I.” He gestures at the mirror. Can’t quite look at it.

“You’ve known me a long time.” Eames’ breath tickles over his fringe. His voice is soft, lilted like a child’s. “A _long_ time. With marks, it’s easier, people we’ve only just met—You have different pictures of me in your head. Too much to draw on.”

Arthur frowns at the ground, feeling warm and enclosed, and still shaking inside like toppling stone. “Why did you let me do it?”

Eames shakes his head again. A weak smile twists over his face. “I didn’t think.” He sighs. “I didn’t think, Arthur.” 

** 

Later, the sun sets in a coral wash over the roofs of the real world, and Eames swirls his tumbler like a wine flute. “Teaching,” he ventures, staring hard into the glass.

“Hm.”

“Am I any good at it?”

Arthur’s unable to keep the surprise from his voice. “You’re excellent at it.” 

Eames’ eyes flicker up, fast as the smile that shivers at his mouth.

Arthur gets it. He leans forward, brings Eames’ hand to his lips and kisses it once, twice. “Yes,” he says, looking Eames right in the eye. “You are.”

The first tremor of a full, engaging future ripples through his belly.

**

Ariadne is Eames’ next student after Arthur, an earnest, intuitive pupil that Arthur had forgotten about until faced with it again—until he has to deflect her first good-natured shove. It takes her longer to learn than Arthur, and they spend a week in and out of a seaside dream with foghorns and calling gulls, calm tide pools with admirable reflective qualities.

It’s nothing like the vast, pounding shores of Limbo, and Arthur _has_ seen those in his real dreams this year, too many times.

Ariadne fashions a Saito that has Eames in stitches, straight giggles that sound inconceivably young, and leave Arthur smiling wider than he has in a long while. Since long before Eames’ diagnosis, even. Ariadne hip-bumps Eames into the surf, and when Arthur goes to help him up, he ends up there too, wet all along one side of his body, sand down his shirt, and the salty taste of Eames’ kiss lingering across his tongue.

A second later, Ariadne joins them, dropping to her knees and heaping seaweed into Arthur’s lap.

**

Eames takes one other student after that, a chemist friend of Yusuf’s with a hankering to stretch himself. He’s already well familiar with dreamshare and mature enough to know when to shut up and listen. His forges, while not perfect, are quirky and complex, and what he lacks in skill he makes up for in ingenuity.

That, Arthur knows, is something Eames appreciates in spades.

Arthur builds the world and provides them with a dreamer. It’s a simple thing, letting Eames in. There’s nothing left in his brain that cries out against Eames’ presence. Arthur can go on for hours, observing, while his projections mill and wander, and when they’re done with each lesson, Eames’ student gives him a respectful nod. 

**

“Hello?”

“Is this Arthur?”

This is his only remaining professional number, older and still secure, for all that’s worth. Arthur waits silently, cell to his ear.

“I, uh. Druitt told me to call you?”

“Did he?”

The man on the other end of the line is young and flustered, but trying. To do what, Arthur’s not sure. “I have a proposal for you. I can’t guarantee much money, but you were very highly recommended—”

Arthur grits his teeth. “Not interested.”

“No, no! It’s, it’s not a job. It’s not that kind of job.” The man takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m a subpar forger. I’m not good. I worked a heist with Druitt a month back, and he says I’m promising, but… And then Ari said that you—”

“Ari.”

“She’s Druitt’s student? Not that she really needs teaching, god knows, but… Look, I met her through him, and she says—they both swear Eames really is the best. Best forger in the field. Ari says he taught her a lot in a really short span of time, and I was wondering—”

“You do realize I’m not his proprietor.”

The guy pauses. “Of course not. You’re _Arthur.”_ Like he’s conjuring something.

Arthur pushes it aside. “I do not tell him to jump. He takes the—” jobs “—offers that _he_ has evaluated from the individuals _he_ has vetted. You don’t call me and get him as part of the package, do you understand?”

“I absolutely do,” the kid rushes. “I do. I’m sorry.”

He should just hang up. But something, not in this guy’s plea, but in the look on Eames’ face in that dream mirror, when Arthur wore his skin… It tugs at him. “That said. I am willing to pass along a message when I see him.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much, you have no idea.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “The message?”

The kid leaves his phone number—god, Arthur hopes it’s a proper burner phone or there’ll be a damn good reason this guy never makes it past ‘novice’—and an earnest request for Eames to call him back about lessons. Whenever he has the time. If he’s so inclined. No rush. It would sound sarcastic from anyone but this kid.

In the end, Arthur hangs up, then stares at his phone in disbelief.

**

Word spreads. It’s good word.

Arthur learns that Eames is as adaptive at teaching as he is at forging. That he has less patience for idiocy than Arthur was led to believe, but hides it incredibly well when the student does indeed show promise. That he rates ‘promise’ in very particular ways, and does not use the same rubric for everyone.

Arthur always knew Eames could read a person faster and more thoroughly than anyone, but he’d never seen Eames cut someone off for ticking too highly on the wrong end of the meter before. It’s quick and it’s non-negotiable. Eames can do it just by speaking to the student-hopeful on the phone. 

The one time Arthur catches Eames’ eyes lingering on him just after hanging up is when he first wonders about Eames’ motivation for such swift refusal.

Life isn’t like it was. It’s strange to be circling around the PASIV again, even if the atmosphere is completely different. The sense of constant activity is back, but not as harrowing. Arthur’s blood doesn’t beat nearly as hard as it did when he was neck-deep in dreamshare, but neither does it flow sluggish and clogged as it did after Eames’ diagnosis. 

It _thrums._ It’s steady, and it lets go of him when he needs it to. There’s something to be said for the nine-to-five type of work.

In Eames’ students, Arthur weathers the deluge of new personalities just as Eames must, but for Eames, it seems to be a breath of life, while Arthur feels off-kilter. That, at least, is the same: dreamshare, while profitable and generous with adrenaline, is about the thieves as much as the theft. Arthur has never naturally been a people person, and he recedes back into his sideline stance easily. Facts and physics. Observation, assortment, compilation.

These student forgers are young and vibrant, the impressionable future of dreamshare. There’s so much vigor inside them, seeping out around the edges in flurries. They latch onto Eames like Velcro, and their awe is plain, doe-eyed worshippers who know exactly out of which grail they drink. Arthur can see Eames engaging again, energy once packed cautiously away now rising back to the fore. The man he knew appears again in gentle gusts. It’s gorgeous. Arthur’s heart hurts every time.

In the dark of their bedroom, wrapped in blankets and bare skin, Arthur wonders if Eames really needs him anymore.

The setting is a dockyard, with seagulls crying and hulls creaking. This student is trying on old age, by turns becoming comical and sobering in appearance, and Eames has been nodding with every shift.

The student dons bow-legs and the longest beard known to man, and collapses out of it, laughing. Eames’ smile is quick and sharp, but his eyes are intent, already finding areas for improvement.

“Final minute,” Arthur calls, approaching the end of the pier. Both of them look up, but Eames…

Eames _lights_ up. All his focus fixates instantly, leaving the student as far behind as if he’d dived off the dock and swum out to sea. Eames’ eyes travel Arthur’s face unrepentantly, and the smile there opens wide. 

Later that night between kisses, Eames whispers of skills and tricks, abilities he wants to nurture. Not the students themselves, but the ways Eames knows he can take hold of that talent and tease it into a full blown gift if given the proper leeway.

Arthur arches into Eames’ deft touch and knows he has nothing to worry about. The two of them are so much deeper than superficial fears.

**

“You’re the best.”

Arthur turns. One of Eames’ new student group stands there with a pair of gloves in her hand. Behind her, two other students sit, trying on each other’s faces and feet, but this young woman’s attention is all for him.

“Was,” Arthur says, and smiles briefly. He coils the PASIV line around his fingers.

She shakes her head, slow and sure. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to meet you.”

This time he faces her fully, a frown tightening at his eyes. She grins, youthful and helpless, and gestures at nothing. “They all talk about what you’ve done. You and Eames.”

“They do, huh?”

She nods.

“Hm.” He squares the vials in their case. “I was under the impression we weren’t favorites.”

“More like legends.”

This time, he studies her, hard.

She’s been here for two weeks, and as a forger, she’s… adequate. Her fervor lies in the detail, though, Arthur recognizes it in every motion, the way she catalogues and organizes, the way she approaches the forge. The way she adapts. She’s a list-maker, a filer and a box-checker. 

She would be a great forger. But she could be an _exceptional_ point.

A hundred feet away, Eames is talking a disgruntled man through a gender swap. Eames’ mouth is a passive moue, his stance patient, and it bleeds over visibly into his protégé. Arthur nods in his direction. “Every word he says? Listen. Watch every gesture.”

She hangs onto each of his words. He remembers that glint, the consummate student shining out and beckoning to teachers the world around, as well as to people who never thought they could instruct anyone.

“When you can fool him with your forge,” Arthur says as he snaps the PASIV shut, “come see me and I’ll set you up with a master chemist.”

“I don’t know anything about Somnacin,” she hedges, and he cocks an eyebrow.

“I’m not teaching you about Somnacin. I’m teaching you to set a stage.” 

** 

It’s so easy to love Eames. Arthur tumbles into it without regret, a last restful slide that he can’t see the point of fighting. It’s easy to kiss him beneath the ear, to take his hand as they pass each other between living room and kitchen, to hook his pinky around Eames’ thumb while they meander the neighborhood, and watch Eames gaze at him thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye.

It’s easier still to unfold him across their bed, to run his nose down the length of Eames’ arm all the way to his ribs, to catch the lick of sweat as his chest expands. To break his silence in broken sound, a tremble that reaches all the way to Eames’ hands where they cup Arthur’s face. To force his own name from Eames’ throat, the most guttural, tortured, exquisite sound he’s ever heard.

It’s easier now to touch Eames’ still-bare head and linger not because of what’s missing, but just to linger.

There’s no more struggle, no push or pull in directions he’s no longer going. No missing fragment that he fears he’ll never find. More necessary to breathe this air, to understand that he won’t always breathe, and more importantly, that Eames won’t always breathe. That Arthur can’t waste time dreading it. The day is shorter than he’d like, but it’s here, now, to be experienced. 

It’s easy to live.

**  
**  
**

A year, clean. It’s a salty-sweet taste. Arthur licks brine from his lips, and at the edges of the sea, the sky melts into sherbet orange and plum. Straight above? Blue as crystal.

Eames’ palms brush his spine, lazy with the water’s sway. He steps close to where Arthur floats, and his chest presses to Arthur’s arm, wet and warm. “Shut your eyes.”

Arthur obeys, basks in fuzzy pink darkness, inhales through his nose until it fills his chest, flushes all else out.

Eames’ lips are light, the longest, most chaste kiss to ever move over Arthur’s mouth. It touches every part. Eames tastes of heat, smells of rain. He curls Arthur close, holding him securely on the surface, and the water laps about Arthur’s face in gentle waves.

Arthur opens his eyes, looks into hazel-green and an easy smile.

“I’d rather see,” he whispers, and smiles back. The sunset turns the sea to glass, and the sky reflects, endless. 

~fin~

 

_As you float now, where I held you_  
and let go, remember when fear  
cramps your heart what I told you:  
lie gently and wide to the light-year  
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you. 

_(excerpt from First Lesson by Philip Booth)_

**Author's Note:**

>  ****WARNING: This story contains a major character with brain cancer, and the treatment and recovery thereof.****  
>   
> 
> The title of this story comes from First Lesson by Philip Booth. The entire wonderful poem can be found [here](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/first-lesson/)
> 
> Thank you very, very much to coffeejunkii for constantly brainstorming and betaing this fic... to dysonrules for the final beta... and to pir8fancier for all her help on resource material and advice on approaching the subject matter.


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